The impact of transmission power on the performance of a WBAN prone to mutual interference

Wireless body sensor networks (WBANs) enable patients' vital signs to be continuously monitored in a way that causes no discomfort to them and that does not affect their privacy. These networks, however, may be located in some environments prone to interference caused by adjacent WBANs, such as hospitals. Consequently, network performance may deteriorate seriously due to this issue. We aim through this paper to investigate through simulation the impact of the presence of an adjacent BAN, when its transmit power varies, on the performance of a reference BAN. We are considering both the CM3A path loss model, described in the IEEE 802.15.6 standard for the 2.4 GHz on-body channel, as well as the temporal variation phenomenon. Performance evaluation is made in terms of packet loss rate (PLR). Simulations are carried out using the open source platform Castalia 3.3. The findings of the study have shown that the PLR is more important as the adjacent BAN's transmission power increases.