Study of Distributed Coordination for Improved Coexistence of Body Area Networks

BANs (Body Area Networks) operating in the surroundings may experience interference. While diverse mechanisms exist to mitigate interference, device coordination over which frequency band to operate can increase reliability significantly. Device coordination in an open and unlicensed spectrum is challenging, particularly since users experience varying spectrum availability over time and location or 'spectrum diversity'. We propose a distributed coordination mechanism that handles spectrum diversity under BANs network dynamics. The coordination provides a robust operation in terms of throughput and latency.The proposal can be implemented at the Link Layer with and without modifying the MAC protocol. The modifications to the MAC protocol are minimal.