New dynamic, reliable and energy efficient scheduling for wireless body area networks (WBAN)

Wireless body area networks (WBANs) facilitate efficient and cost-effective e-health care and well-being applications. The WBAN has unique challenges and features compared to other wireless sensor networks. In addition to battery power consumption, the vulnerability and the unpredicted channel behaviour of the MAC layer make channel access a serious problem. Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols can help in achieving a reliable and energy efficient WBAN. However, traditional TDMA techniques adopted by WBAN legacy standards, such as IEEE 802.15.4 and the IEEE 802.15.6 do not consider sufficiently the channel status or the reliability of nodes. Thus, this paper presents two new TDMA based techniques to improve WBAN reliability and energy efficiency. Both techniques synchronise nodes adaptively whilst tackling their channel link status. The proposed techniques are evaluated within various traffic rates and time slot lengths. In addition, their performance is compared with the IEEE 802.15.4 and IEEE 802.15.6 MAC. The results confirm that the proposed techniques have the potential to improve WBAN reliability and energy efficiency.