Interference mitigation for body area networks

Due to very low power communication, wireless body area networks are potentially susceptible to interference from other coexisting wireless systems including other BANs that might exist in their vicinity. Using power control to combat this interference might not be efficient. It could also lead to situations with higher levels of interference in the system. On the other hand, interference mitigation can help to not only preserve link quality but also allow more nodes to simultaneously operate. This paper proposes several interference mitigation schemes such as adaptive modulation as well as adaptive data rate and duty cycle for body area networks. Interference Mitigation Factor (IMF) is introduced as a measure to quantify the effectiveness of the proposed schemes.