MAC Protocols for WBAN healthcare applications

In recent years, Wireless Body area network (WBAN) has become an active field of research and development because of its great potential to improve the quality of health care through continuous monitoring of health status and early detection of possible problems. One of the main issues in such network is the design of a Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol that plays a vital role for the efficient functionality of WBANs. In this article, we propose a classification of MAC protocols based on their trends and strategies in WBAN healthcare applications. Then, we explain briefly several MAC protocols and we compare them based on their salient features. The aim of the current paper is to serve as a reference for the new researchers and to provide a better understanding of the research directions in this scientific area.