Temperature-Based Routing Protocols for Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs): A Comparative Analysis

Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) has evolved and has found enormous applications, especially in the medical field for e-health monitoring. WBAN allows patient data to be collected remotely with the help of various tiny sensors that are present in or on the human body in the form of implanted devices like a pacemaker or wearable devices like skin patches, smart watch, etc. that collect data related to human vital parameters like blood pressure, sugar level, pulse, temperature, etc. The sensor nodes play an important role in routing and sometimes the node's temperature rises beyond the given threshold value, which can lead to adverse effects on the human body. This paper addresses various problems caused due to heat effects and provides an overview of the various types of routing available in WBAN with a focus on temperature-based routing. The various recent existing routing protocols based on thermal-effects have been reviewed over the past few years. The paper provides insight into the objective, problem statement, tool, and technique used in the existing papers. It also summarizes the various advantages, limitations, and future scope, which is useful in providing research direction to researchers who are interested in this particular area of routing. This paper provides an updated review of routing protocols based on temperature, with a focus on the recent protocols thus highlighting the need for research, challenges, and open research issues in this domain.