Efficient cluster-based routing algorithm for body sensor networks

Body Sensor Networks have gained a lot of research interest lately for the variety of applications they can serve. In such networks where nodes might hold critical information about people's lives, designing efficient routing schemes is very important to guarantee data delivery with the lowest delay and energy consumption. Even though some cluster-based routing schemes were proposed in the literature, none of them offer a complete solution that guarantees energy and delay efficient routing in BSN. In this paper, we propose a robust cluster- based algorithm that increases the routing efficiency through every step of the routing process: cluster formation, cluster head election, and routing operation of data to the sink. The proposed algorithm is compared to existing cluster-based schemes, and MATLAB simulations are performed to assess the performance of the proposed algorithm with respect to delay and energy consumption.

I. Introduction

Body Sensor Networks (BSNs) consist of smart wearable and implanted medical sensors able to collect physiological data from the human body and send them wirelessly through a sink node to health care providers for analysis and decision making [5]. Research interest in BSN field has remarkably increased during the past few years for its ability to enhance people's lives, and the variety of medical and non-medical applications it can serve such as anomaly identification, emotion detection, security authentication, entertainment, sports, etc. [6], [4].