A reliable and energy-efficient leader election algorithm for Wireless Body Area Networks

Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) which offer a variety of promising applications in the areas of medical and consumer electronics have been paid lots of attention. However, very limited work has been done on the network reliability combined with energy conservation in spite of their fundamental importance. In order to bridge this gap, we devote this paper to developing a reliable and energy-efficient leader election (REELE) algorithm for WBANs. To this end, technically, we first partition a WBAN into regions and build the reliability and energy consumption models. By the reliability analysis, we then propose a novel communication strategy for nodes and further derive the total energy consumption of a region. With the reliability and residual energy of a node and total energy consumption considered jointly, REELE algorithm can considerably enhance reliability and conserve energy. Extensive simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness and the efficiency of REELE in terms of longer network lifetime, better energy characteristics as well as higher reliability.