Performance analysis of coexisting IEEE 802.15.4-based health monitoring WBANs

Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) for health monitoring systems are required to meet stringent performance demands regarding the tradeoff between reliability, latency, and power efficiency. WBANs feature limited range and bandwidth and they are prone to interference. Considering the life-critical nature of some WBAN systems, we present an in-depth investigation of the situations where the dynamic coexistence of multiple WBANs may severely affect their performances. In this paper, we analytically study the effect of coexistence on the operation of WBANs. We present a mathematical analysis to precisely obtain the probabilities of successful communication and validate this analysis through simulation. Our simulation analysis indicates that in the default mode of operation, coexistence of three WBANs can lead to the loss of 20-85% of data transmissions for typical sensor configurations.