Human-Centric Wireless Communication Networks

This thesis covers two main topics: the design and performance evaluation of Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs), and the simulation and mathematical modeling of Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs). Different Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols for WBANs are implemented on dedicated hardware in order to evaluate, through extensive measurement campaigns, the performance of the network in terms of packet loss rate, delay and energy consumption. Novel solutions to cope with body shadowing and to improve the coexistence with other wireless technologies, are presented and evaluated. An analytic model for the CSMA/CA protocol defined in the IEEE 802.15.6 standard is also presented. The benefits of offloading part of the traffic carried by a wireless backbone to a DTN composed of mobile nodes in a urban environment, is also investigated. A more analytic approach, mainly using tools from stochastic geometry and Markov chains theory, is used to develop a mathematical framework for the evaluation of the performance of routing rules for DTNs.