Design of a Distributed Protocol for Proportional Fairness in Wireless Body Area Networks

We study a distributed protocol for time-division multiple access (TDMA) with applications in wireless body area networks. Our scheme is derived from a bio-inspired algorithm known as Pulse-Coupled Oscillator, in which each node in the network update its state based on its knowledge of the neighborhood. The protocol we propose is suitable for negotiation of a shared resource in a distributed manner, and is adaptive to changes in the network size or in the nodes´ demands. We discuss the implementation of such scheme from an application perspective, and discuss the impact of the physical layer on its performance.