B-Move: A Transmission Scheduler Based on Human Body Movements for WBANs

Abstract

Advances in electronics have enabled the development of intelligent miniaturized biomedical sensors that can be used to monitor the human body. The use of wireless communication proved to be an alternative, which provides less discomfort to patients and good cost-benefit. In order to fully exploit the benefits of wireless technologies in e-health, a new type of wireless networks has emerged: Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs). However, technical and social challenges must be addressed to enable their adoption. Some factors, such as the use of the human body as a propagation media, the effects of radiation on human tissue and human body movements, make WBANs a new paradigm of wireless communication networks. As a person moves, transmission channel quality may vary depending on body position, which may result in poor network performance. To meet the requirements of WBAN applications, while preserving the energy efficiency and the user's physical safety, this paper proposes B-Move, a WBAN transmission scheduler based on the movement of the human body. Our proposal was analyzed in Castalia Simulator and obtained results present improvements in packet delivery rate and energy efficiency, when compared to polling and contention-based medium access (CSMA/CA) used in the WBAN IEEE 802.15.6 standard.