Priority-based capacity and power allocation in co-located WBANs using Stackelberg and bargaining games

To mitigate the interference in co-located wireless body area networks (WBANs), this paper proposes an inter-WBAN priority-based capacity allocation scheme based on the Nash bargaining game, and an intra-WBAN priority-based power control scheme based on the Stackelberg game. Moreover, under the network capacity imposed by the Nash bargaining solution, two pricing mechanisms: non-uniform pricing and uniform pricing, are introduced in the Stackelberg game and the Stackelberg equilibrium under each mechanism is achieved analytically. Additionally, owing to the special features of WBANs, the players priorities indicated by exigency of the sensed data and the energy consumption of sensors are considered in the design of utility functions. Extensive simulations show that the proposed schemes are energy efficient and can improve the network quality of service in terms of real time and reliability of critical data transmission.