Performance analysis of IEEE 802.15.6 CSMA/CA using equilibrium point analysis

This paper presents a performance analysis of the IEEE 802.15.6 CSMA/CA by an approximate analytical technique called equilibrium point analysis (EPA). We develop an approximate Markov chain model of a wireless body area network (WBAN) with the CSMA/CA protocol taking into account data and ACK traffic. We then calculate throughput and average response time by the technique of EPA. The accuracy of analytic results obtained from the model is examined through simulation. Furthermore, we evaluate the stability behavior of the CSMA/CA network for varying the number of nodes, minimum number of contention window (CW), and maximum number of CW. Numerical results from both analysis and simulation show maximum number of CW strongly affects maximum number of nodes under constraint that the network is stable.