Design of a Distributed Protocol for Proportional Fairness in Wireless Body Area Networks

We study a distributed protocol for time-division multiple access (TDMA) with applications in wireless body area networks. Our scheme is derived from a bio-inspired algorithm known as Pulse-Coupled Oscillator, in which each node in the network update its state based on its knowledge of the neighborhood. The protocol we propose is suitable for negotiation of a shared resource in a distributed manner, and is adaptive to changes in the network size or in the nodes' demands. We discuss the implementation of such scheme from an application perspective, and discuss the impact of the physical layer on its performance.