Abstract
Global routing protocols in wireless body area networks are considered. Global routing is augmented with a novel link cost function designed to balance energy consumption across the network. The result is a substantial increase in network lifetime at the expense of a marginal increase in energy per bit. Network maintenance requirements are reduced as well, since balancing energy consumption means all batteries need to be serviced at the same time and less frequently. The proposed routing protocol is evaluated using a hardware experimental setup comprising multiple nodes and an access point. The setup is used to assess network architectures, including an on-body access point and an off-body access point with varying number of antennas. Real-time experiments are conducted in indoor environments to assess performance gains. In addition, the setup is used to record channel attenuation data which are then processed in extensive computer simulations providing insight on the effect of protocol parameters on performance. Results demonstrate efficient balancing of energy consumption across all nodes, an average increase of up to 40% in network lifetime corresponding to a modest average increase of 0.4 dB in energy per bit, and a cutoff effect on required transmission power to achieve reliable connectivity.
Highlights
Nodes in a Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) are required to operate under strict resource constraints
We presented preliminary results of the proposed approach in [12], where the link cost function was implemented for a single network architecture with on-body Access Point (AP)
The cost function was designed to avoid relaying through nodes which spent more accumulated energy than others
Summary
Nodes in a Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) are required to operate under strict resource constraints. To reduce the maintenance requirements associated with recharging of batteries, an efficient routing protocol is crucial for extending battery life. Power-efficient routing for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) has received much attention in the past. Porting routing solutions from WSNs to WBANs is problematic due the different network architectures and operating conditions. The task of monitoring the environment does not have to involve all sensor-nodes all the time. This setting brings about routing solutions which rely on dynamic network configurations involving many hops from sensor-node to sink
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