LAMP: Load adaptive MAC protocol for inter-BAN interference mitigation

Interference mitigation among body area networks (BANs) has been a critical challenge due to their mobility and fully distributed nature. When two or more nearby BANs transmit simultaneously, collisions may occur and body sensors therefore consume more energy for re-transmission. Each BAN thus spends more channel time, which lowers the total network capacity. To reduce energy consumption and better the network capacity, in this paper, we propose a CSMA/CA-based Load Adaptive MAC Protocol for inter-BAN, called LAMP. Based on Markov chain analysis, LAMP can dynamically choose a proper contention window size according to the load in the operating channel and automatically switch to another channel when the current channel is near congested. Simulation results show that LAMP outperforms traditional CSMA/CA protocols in terms of throughput and energy consumption. Meanwhile, it keeps high fairness.