Effects Investigation of MAC and PHY Layer Parameters on the Performance of IEEE 802.15.6 CSMA/CA

Abstract: The recently released IEEE 802.15.6 standard specifies several physical (PHY) layer and medium access control (MAC) layer protocols for variety of medical and non-medical applications of Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN). The most suitable way for enhancing network performance is to be the choice of different MAC and PHY parameters based on quality of service (QoS) requirements of different applications. The impact of different MAC and PHY parameters on the network performance and the trade-off relationship between the parameters are essential to overcome the limitations of exiting carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) scheme of IEEE 802.15.6 standard. To address this issue, we develop a Markov chain-based analytical model of IEEE 802.15.6 CSMA/CA for all user priorities (UPs) and apply this general model to different network scenarios to investigate the effects of the packet arrival rate, channel condition, payload size, access phase length, access mechanism and number of nodes on the performance parameters viz. reliability, normalized throughput, energy consumption and average access delay. Moreover, we conclude the effectiveness of different access phases, access mechanisms and user priorities of intra-WBAN.