EAR-BAN: Energy efficient adaptive routing in Wireless Body Area Networks

Abstract

Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN), a neoteric intelligent monitoring system, is envisaged to unleash a wave of personalized, advanced and integrated applications in the field of medical, fitness, sports, entertainment, military and consumer electronics. In WBAN, network longevity is a major challenge due to the limitation in the availability of energy supply and routing protocol plays a key role towards making such networks energy efficient. In this paper, we propose an energy efficient cluster based routing protocol for WBANs, named as energy efficient adaptive routing in wireless body area network (EAR-BAN). Although EAR-BAN is a cluster based routing protocol, it also combines the benefits of direct and multi hop transmission methods, depending on the energy level and spatial information of body nodes, to formalize an energy efficient, adaptive and opportunistic routing. Moreover, its centralized operation reduces the computational burden of body nodes.