Experimental Evaluation of Initial Connection Time with Interference in Body Area Network

In recent years, demand for healthcare IoT including daily healthcare monitoring has been increasing. Body area network (BAN) is expected to be a core technology to realize such healthcare IoT. In particular, SmartBAN, a BAN technology standardized by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), is attracting attention. SmartBAN uses the 2.4 GHz ISM band, which may receive interference from various electronic devices such as wireless LAN and Bluetooth. In this paper, the influence of radio wave interference during the initial connection process of SmartBAN is experimentally evaluated by generating radio interference using devices that simulate an adaptive frequency hopping for Bluetooth. We measured the initial connection time when changing the hopping frequency and transmission timing of the interference wave sources and evaluated the effects of interference on the initial connection procedure of SmartBAN. The evaluation results revealed that although the connection time when there is interference may become slightly longer, it does not significantly affect the establishment of the initial connection.