Cooperative beacon-free MAC layer for body area networks

This paper discusses medium access control (MAC) issues for a body area network (BAN), whose physical layer is Ultrawide Band Impulse radio (UWB-IR). In some particular situations, the MAC layer of a BAN can not rely on a TDMA solution with a beacon emission by a coordinator, as it may be most of the time. We propose a beacon-free MAC layer, based on a collaborative version of the preamble sampling approach. This is designed to address the regulatory LDC constraints, which UWB devices must comply to. Simulations are presented to show that this protocol looks quite interesting and future work is introduced.