Implementation of energy efficient WBAN using IEEE 802.15.6 scheduled access MAC for e-healthcare

Abstract

This work describes the implementation of a complete Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) that is capable of monitoring multiple physiological signals of a patient by means of IEEE 802.15.6 scheduled access MAC protocol. In the WBAN setup, data from multiple sensors are sent to a Body Network Controller (BNC) using low power transceivers. To this end, the BNC is designed to multiplex the data from multiple sensors and send them to a remote server over the Internet using cellular communications, thereby enabling ubiquitous remote health monitoring. The remote server is further configured to accept data from multiple patients, de-multiplex different data of a single patient and store them in a database for pervasive access. Issues related to the hardware implementation of sensor nodes and BNC, and the design of the scheduled access mechanism are addressed. Detailed performance analysis of the WBAN is performed in OPNET simulator to determine the optimum allocation intervals for the sensor nodes that maximizes network capacity while maintaining a frame delay constraint. Further, in order to prolong the battery life of sensor nodes, we obtain the optimal payload sizes that maximizes their energy efficiency.