Efficient Resource Allocation for Co-existing Multi-class Wireless Body Area Networks

摘要

Wireless body area networks (WBANs) are widely being used for continuous patient monitoring. Based on the health conditions, differential service must be provided to critical and normal users. In this paper, we consider coexistence of multi-class WBANs in two scenarios, namely, the indoor environment and hospital environment. A throughput maximization problem is formulated such that high priority is guaranteed to the critical users. Spatial TDMA (STDMA), which allows geographically distant users to transmit in the same resource block, is used as the access control scheme to improve the resource utilization efficiency. To further enhance the efficiency, we propose an uplink NOMA scheme which pairs non interfering user groups to transmit at different power levels in the same resource block. Column generation approach is used to find the solution, as the complexity of the problem increases with increase in the network size. Since the conventional method of solving the pricing problem of the column generation approach is time consuming, a genetic algorithm based approach is proposed, which provides near optimal solution in less amount of time.