Selective Multicast Protocol for Wireless Body Area Networks (W-BAN) for Power Conservation

Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN) is increasingly being recognized as one of the major research focus areas nowadays with the growing need of continuous monitoring and controlling of human healthcare. However in WBAN, attention has to be given to the reliability of data communication due to the critical nature of the data, along with the power conservation as the sensors are battery operated. In this regard, this paper proposes a novel Selective Multicast Protocol (SMP) to efficiently utilize the battery power of a few prioritized surface sensor nodes in a WBAN and also provide more reliability of communication. The multicast protocol has been modified to suit the case of WBAN where number of sensors and monitoring devices are fixed. From the results obtained by simulation it can be concluded that the proposed protocol saves 10% more power of the sensor battery when compared to multihop protocol for every 100 packets transmission in WBAN.