Toward Dependable Internet of Medical Things: IEEE 802.15.6 Ultra-Wideband Physical Layer Utilizing Superorthogonal Convolutional Code

Kento Takabayashi,Hirokazu Tanaka,Katsumi Sakakibara

doi:10.3390/s22062172

Kento Takabayashi, Hirokazu Tanaka + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/s22062172

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Abstract

Wireless body area networks (WBANs) are attracting attention as a very important technology for realizing an Internet of Medical Things (IoMT). IEEE 802.15.6 is well known as one of the international standards for WBANs for the IoMT. This article proposes the combination of the IEEE 802.15.6 ultra-wideband (UWB) physical layer (PHY) with a super orthogonal convolutional code (SOOC) and evaluates its performance as a dependable WBAN. Numerical results show that sufficient dependability cannot be obtained with the error-correcting code specified in IEEE 802.15.6 when applying the single pulse option, while both high energy efficiency and dependability can be obtained by applying an SOCC. In addition, it is confirmed that higher dependability can be obtained by combining an SOCC with a Reed–Solomon (RS) code with a coding rate that is almost the same as the error correction code specified in the standard. Furthermore, the results indicate that high dependability and energy efficiency can be obtained by adjusting the SOCC coding rate and UWB PHY parameters, even in the burst pulse option. The SOCC-applied UWB PHY of this research satisfies the high requirements of the IoMT.

Highlights

With the evolution of technologies such as sensing, edge computing, and artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT) is recognized as a highly important societal technology
One type of technology supporting the development of the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) system is wireless body area networks (WBANs), which flexibly connect biosensors placed near the surface of the body [5–14]
The computer simulation evaluates the case where the (11, 5) shortened Reed–Solomon (RS) code and the (31, 25) RS code are applied to the physical layer header (PHR) and physical layer service data unit (PSDU), respectively, as error correction codes with coding rates almost equal to those of the BCH codes used in IEEE 802.15.6

Summary

Introduction

With the evolution of technologies such as sensing, edge computing, and artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT) is recognized as a highly important societal technology. The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is attracting attention in terms of constructing home medical care and telemedicine systems using medical and healthcare devices and robots [1–4]. One type of technology supporting the development of the IoMT system is wireless body area networks (WBANs), which flexibly connect biosensors placed near the surface of the body [5–14]. A WBAN is a wireless network formed by connecting small sensors located on the surface, inside, and in the immediate vicinity of the body by wireless communication. The authors of [14] proposed a novel energy-efficient medium access control (MAC) protocol for an in-body sensor-based WBAN that modified a superframe structure separating the access phases for an emergency event and a regular event. In [15], a marginal utility theoretical method was proposed to allocate radio resources to on/in-body sensors in a fair and efficient manner in a wirelessly powered body area network

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