Coexistence of WBAN and WLAN in Medical Environments

In this work, we present a coexistence study for wireless body area networks (WBAN) and wireless local area networks (WLAN). The aim is to evaluate the feasibility of WBAN systems in realistic medical environments, assessing their robustness to interference. We focus on the evaluation of the impact of a collocated IEEE 802.11g WLAN interferer on the performance of IEEE 802.15.4/ZigBee transceivers, through a combination of physical (PHY) layer simulations and experimental interference tests in a hospital room. In order to have a better understanding of the underlying communication model, we have also conducted channel measurements, channel modeling and power spectrum measurements. The performance of ZigBee for different system configurations and node topologies is shown, providing insights into the main factors that affect the system performance in a hospital room. In addition, recommendations for high performance operation are provided.