Regret minimization based adaptation of the energy detection threshold in body area networks

IEEE802.15.6 is a radio interface standard for wireless connectivity of wearable and implantable sensors and actuators located inside or in close proximity to the human body i.e., Body Area Network (BAN). Medical applications impose stringent requirements on BAN Quality of Service (QoS), including reliability and on-time availability of the sensors data. However, interference from other co-located BANs or other nearby devices sharing the same spectrum may cause unacceptable QoS degradation. The impact of such degradations can be minimized by using adaptive schemes that intelligently adjust relevant parameters at the transmitting or receiving nodes of a BAN. This paper provides a framework for low complexity regret minimization based algorithms for Energy Detection Threshold (EDT) adaptation in the transmitter node of a BAN. The nodes are assumed to be using the Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) protocol according to the IEEE 802.15.6 BAN standard. Our preliminary simulation results demonstrate the performance gain of our algorithm compared to using a fixed EDT, and thus warrant future efforts in the adaptive EDT optimization as a mechanism to maintain QoS in various interference scenarios.