Localization performance in Wireless Body Sensor Networks with beacon enabled MAC and space-time dependent channel model

Wireless Body Sensor Networks (WBSNs) have recently received a lot of research interests due to their wide applications in healthcare, security, sports and entertainment. Accurate WBSNs localization is a fundamental problem to be overcome to enable the development of effective location-aware applications. This paper introduces and investigates the performance of WBSN localization algorithms using a beacon-enabled TDMA MAC protocol and a space-time dependent channel model. We aim at examining the potential benefits and issues stemming from implementing cooperative positioning strategies, and investigating the resulting trade-off between localization efficiency and MAC performances.