Optimal Energy Efficiency Link Adaptation in IEEE 802.15.6 IR-UWB Body Area Networks

We propose a novel link adaptation mechanism to maximize energy efficiency in IEEE 802.15.6 impulse radio ultra wideband (IR-UWB) wireless body area networks (WBANs). We consider noncoherent energy detection and autocorrelation receivers, suitable for low complexity implementations. The amount of captured energy is first modeled for the on-body WBAN channel. Using our energy capture model and Gaussian approximations for the decision statistic, the error performance of various physical layer modes of the IEEE 802.15.6 standard is derived assuming intra-symbol interference. We refer to the IEEE 802.15.6 specification as a use case. The proposed adaptation scheme can be applied to any other IR-UWB system with noncoherent receivers and is based on the estimated signal to noise ratio and the channel's energy capture index for which we propose unbiased estimators.