Adaptive MAC Protocol Design for Energy Efficient and Reliable WBAN Link

Abstract

The present need for a well-organised and continuous health care service at an affordable price gives rise to a wireless health monitoring technology. Wireless body area network is an emerging field of a wireless sensor network that works in the vicinity of the human body. This technology has its most significant application in the modern healthcare system. This wban architecture is designed to get the health information and daily routine of human activity (both physical and psychological) through energy efficient and reliable radio transceivers connectivity these modern devices behave according to some predesigned rules called communication protocols. The mac protocols are designed specially according to wban standards and requirements. The physiological sensors installed in wban system consume a large amount of energy for communication that leads to frequent data interruption and also a change of implanted devices. As this is troublesome for both patient and server, protocols are continuously upgraded to make the communication highly energy efficient and reliable. The prime aim of this work is to reduce the energy consumption and increase the lifespan of the network. This work proposes an energy harvesting adaptive mac protocol applied for node connectivity and detailed simulation study carried out with the proposed protocol proves to be having minimum power consumption, increased network lifetime, and high throughput compared to the existing mac protocols in wban framework. We have used hybrid mesh topology where all nodes have both uplink and downlink. Here we are utilizing a gts based multi-hop technique and adaptive wake-up mechanism for the sleep mode of the transceiver to minimize the wake-up periods.