Weighted Energy and QoS based Multi-hop Transmission Routing Algorithm for WBAN

Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) is a subset of Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) whereby invasive, non-invasive, low-cost and miniature sensors are used to measure the vital signs of a person to detect chronic diseases in their early stages before symptoms begin to appear. One of the major challenges is the network lifetime and QoS due to limited resources, hence in this paper, an architecture with a single sink node is developed in order to improve the energy management and QoS of the (WBAN). Furthermore, as part of the effort to further improve the network lifetime and QoS, an algorithm which classifies the sensed data into normal, high-normal and critical is developed using MAC protocol. Also, another algorithm called Weighted Energy and QoS (WEQ) algorithm is developed to select the optimal path to transmit the normal and high normal data. In the WEQ, the weight value is computed by considering metrics such as delay, residual energy, link stability, and distance. The route with the highest weight value is selected and the data is transmitted on that route. Extensive simulation is performed on OMNe++ to demonstrate that our work significantly outperforms that of similar works in terms of network lifetime and throughput.