BEC: A novel routing protocol for balanced energy consumption in Wireless Body Area Networks

Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) are getting growing interest because of their suitability for wide range of medical and non-medical applications. These applications demand WBAN to stay functional for a longer time which requires energy-efficient operation. In this paper, we propose a new routing protocol for Balanced Energy Consumption (BEC) in WBANs. In BEC, relay nodes are selected based on a cost function. The nodes send their data to their nearest relay nodes to route it to the sink. The nodes closer to the sink send their data directly to it. Furthermore, the nodes send only critical data when their energy becomes less than a specific threshold. In order to distribute the load uniformly, relay nodes are rotated in each round based on a cost function. Simulation results show that BEC achieves 49% increased network lifetime than OINL (On Increasing Network Lifetime) algorithm.