Game theoretic framework for studying WBAN coexistence: 2-Player game analysis and n-player game estimation

As an emerging technology for anywhere anytime healthcare, Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) bring many benefits as well as challenges. One practical issue is the coexistence of multiple networks in a limited space under resource constraints. Game theory, originally developed from economics, is a mathematical tool to analyse decision making among self-interested agents. Due to the heterogeneous, distributed and autonomous nature of WBANs, game theory is believed to be an appropriate tool to study the coexistence issue. This paper formulates a flexible game theoretic framework to study WBAN coexistence. We provide a detailed mathematical analysis for a 2-player game. When the number of WBANs increases in a game, the complexity in utility calculation and simulations grows greatly. We propose an estimation method to model games involving more than two players.