A Game theoretic approach for performance enhancement of IEEE 802.15.6 based WBAN

A Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) is a network of wireless sensors and medical equipments located inside or outside the human body for collecting biological signals for various medical and non-medical applications. IEEE 802.15.6 was developed as the standard for WBAN where nodes can access the channel via contention access or contention free access. In this paper, only contention access is considered. A Non-Cooperative Game theoretical framework is applied for the IEEE 802.15.6 WBAN MAC analysis. Then the game model is appropriately modified so as to improve the network throughput and data latency by defining the utility function of each node as function of these two factors. All the nodes will be trying to maximize its utility function by adopting suitable strategy. The existence of Nash equilibrium is verified for this game. Simulation shows improved performance of the proposed mechanism when the equilibrium is attained.