Prospects of 60 GHz mmWave WBAN: A PHY-MAC Joint Approach

Two key challenges of the PHY-MAC layers of the wireless body area network (i.e., WBAN) are - achieving high system capacity and ensuring secure coexistence. Besides capacity and coexistence, a WBAN PHY (i.e., physical) layer is required to fulfill some preconditions such as it should not impose any detrimental effect on the human health, the network devices must be small enough to be wearable, and it should be suitable for the small area coverage. On the other hand, besides coexistence, the MAC (i.e., Media Access Control) layer needs to ensure service priority, and fairness in resource sharing. Traditionally, the WBAN PHY-MAC is based on 2.4 GHz microwave. However, recently, 60 GHz mmWave based WBAN has been envisioned as a possible solution to the above mentioned challenges. In this paper we have conducted the quantitative comparisons between the 60 GHz and the 2.4 GHz based WBANs. We have also shown the superiority of the 60 GHz based PHY over the 2.4 GHz based PHY grounded on the derived mathematical formulas and simulation results in terms of the system capacity, per cell channel ratio, co-channel reuse ratio, network coverage, device miniaturization, and health issues. Furthermore, we have proposed a game theory based solution for the WBAN MAC layer to ensure coexistence, service priority, and fairness in resource sharing.