  Recent advances in microelectronics have enabled the realization of Wireless
Body Area Networks (WBANs). Increasing the transmission power of WBAN's nodes
improves the Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio (SINR), and hence
decreases the bit error probability. However, this increase may impose
interference on nodes within the same WBAN or on other nodes of nearby
coexisting WBANs, as these WBANs may use similar frequencies. Due to co-channel
interference, packet collisions and retransmissions are increased and
consequently, the power consumption of the individual WBANs may increase
correspondingly. To address this problem, we adopt the approach of two-hop
cooperative communication due to its efficiency in power savings. In this
paper, we propose a cooperative power control-based algorithm, namely, IMA, for
interference mitigation among the individual sensors of a single WBAN.
Basically, our approach selects an optimal set of relays from the nodes within
each WBAN to mitigate the interference. Thus, IMA selection criterion relies on
the best channel, namely, SINR and power conditions to select the set of best
relays. The experimental results illustrate that IMA improves the SINR, the
power efficiency and extends WBAN lifetime. In addition, the results illustrate
that IMA lowers the bit error probability and improves the throughput.
