Low-power Wireless Sensor Network protocol of Mobile Health based on IPv6

Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) is getting more and more popular by taking human body as its main application carrier, and IPv6 provides the feasibility of application for using Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) in Mobile Health (mHealth). However, IPv6 protocol does not take power consumption into consideration, which makes it difficult to apply this technology to sensor nodes with limited energy. To solve this problem, we propose a improved 6LoWPAN (IPv6 over low power wireless personal area networks) header compression algorithm applied to IEEE 802.15.6. Simulation results carried out by OPNET14.5 indicate that the improved 6LoWPAN header compression algorithm reduces the sensor node energy consumption and prolongs the survival time of the network through compressing packets to the greatest degree. It also improves network efficiency by reducing the packet loss rate and average delay at the same time.