Mutual Coexistence in WBANs: Impact of Modulation Schemes of the IEEE 802.15.6 Standard

Abstract

Due to the mobility of subjects carrying wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs), a BAN may be found in an environment that contains other adjacent BANs, which may influence its proper functioning. The purpose of this paper is to study the effect of interference between adjacent BANs on the performance of a reference BAN in terms of packet loss rate (PLR), while considering the following four parameters: the distance separating adjacent BANs, the number of nodes and traffic payload of an interferer BAN, and the transmission data rate. The study is conducted for the two modulation schemes proposed by the IEEE 802.15.6 standard in the 2.4 GHz narrow band, which are: Differential Binary Phase Shift Keying (DBPSK) modulation and Differential Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (DQPSK) modulation. Simulation results have shown that the adoption of a lower-order modulation such as DBPSK can reduce the effect of interference among adjacent BANs.