Asynchronous inter-network interference avoidance for wireless body area networks

This paper considers the internetwork interference problem in environments with multiple wireless body area networks (WBANs). We propose an asynchronous internetwork interference avoidance scheme (abbreviated as AIIA), which is based on the hybrid multiple access of carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) and time division multiple access (TDMA). In AIIA, the gateway device of each WBAN maintains a table, called an AIIA table, which includes the timing offset and TDMA transmission schedule information corresponding to the interfering WBANs. By referring to the table, the conflicting TDMA schedule can be checked and updated by itself, in asynchronous and distributed manners. Extensive simulations are conducted to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of AIIA.