Max-Min Throughput Design for Wireless Body Area Network with Backscatter Communication

Recently, wireless body area network (WBAN) has become a prospective body monitoring system that can provide stable health services. In this paper, we propose a WBAN assisted by the backscatter communication (Backcom). In order to improve the throughput and ensure the fairness and quality of service (Qos) during the backscatter period, we investigate a throughput optimization problem based on the max-min fairness principle and introduce the robustness constraints. Because we jointly optimize the transmission power of access point (AP), backscattering coefficient, and backscattering time of the WBAN, making the optimization problem non-convex caused by the coupled variables. Therefore, we use the slack variable method and the successive convex approximation (SCA) method to convert the non-convex problem into convex. Simulation results show that compared to the traditional sum throughput algorithm and the linear energy harvested model, our proposed algorithm brings better fairness and robustness.