Coexistence mechanisms in ultra-wideband body area network

The future development of on- and inter-body sensors will cause these devices to become more common in people's everyday lives. Eventually, these Body Area Networks (BANs) will appear in more and more areas of human life and will grow in numbers. Increase of the density of BAN networks will raise problems of co-existence between them, which is, in some ways, similar to the way people themselves experience problems with the growth of population. IEEE 802.15 standard does not include mandatory solutions for such a co-existence problem, but does suggest a number of techniques that can reduce the statistical chances of collision. Another method of dealing with the collision issue, suggested by IEEE 802.15, is to allow direct negotiation between BANs in order to match their transmitting schedules. The research presented here examines the possibility of coexistence of Ultra-Wideband (UWB) BANs, based on the ability of each BAN to study the transmissions schedule of neighboring BANs in order to update its own transmission schedule accordingly. Such a study is done by running optimization algorithms over a time map of previous collisions. This technique allows the BAN to learn from its own previous mistakes in order to improve co-existence with other BANs, in a manner similar to the way humans do.