A Game Theoretic Model of Distributed Power Control for Body Sensor Networks to Reduce Bioeffects

Abstract

In the prevailing development of applying wireless sensor networks to human body monitoring, it should be carefully addressed on the possible adverse effects caused by radio frequency radiation to the body, especially for long term, intensive and close inspection. This paper first investigates the bioeffects caused by radiofrequency transmission of sensor node, including thermal effects and athermal effects. The bioeffects model is studied in both near-field and far-field, in relation to specific absorption rate (SAR). A bioeffects metric is then proposed to evaluate the adverse biological effects. After identifying the factors that can reduce the adverse health effects in the communication system we propose a game theoretic model of distributed power control to analyze bioeffects for the system. The bioeffects cost function is introduced to the network utility as a metric to evaluate the performance of wireless body sensor networks in terms of health effect consideration. The two main contributions of this work are that a normalized bioeffects metric, equivalent coefficient-of-absorption-and-bioeffects (CAB), is introduced to evaluate and design the communication protocols, and a novel game theoretic power control model is employed to balance the bioeffects for CDMA-based wireless body sensor networks.