Routing protocols in wireless body sensor networks: A comprehensive survey

Abstract

Wireless sensor technologies, especially Wireless Body Sensor Network (WBSN) or Wireless Body Area Sensor Network (WBASN), have gone beyond the fine-grained continuous monitoring platforms and became one of the enabling technologies that provide many successful applications in medical and non-medical fields. The physiological monitoring systems are developed to monitor the human health issues and are responsible to route the sensed data (physical or vital information for instance, blood sugar, Electromyography (EMG), Electrocardiogram (ECG), Electro-encephalograph (EEG), temperature, etc.) from biosensors nodes to the medical or non-medical server for further analysis. Many routing and data dissemination protocols have been specifically designed for WBSNs. Routing protocols in WBSNs might differ depending on the application and network architecture. This paper present a comprehensive survey of state-of-the-art routing schemes in WBSN based on the recent standards and publications. First, we present the deep insight of WBSN and its related technologies. Next, distinguished characteristics of WBSN and its applications are discussed. Furthermore, routing issues and challenges are also explored as a source of inspiration towards future developments in WBANs. Based on the operational mechanism, existing routing protocols are classified as: temperature aware, QoS aware, security aware, cluster based, cross layered based and posture based routing protocols. Finally, various summary tables are provided that evaluates the efficacy of routing protocols in pursuit of design characteristics of WBSN.