Study and simulation of WBAN MAC protocols for emergency data traffic in healthcare

This paper presents issues, limitations and challenges of designing WBAN MAC protocols for handling emergency based medical data transmission in healthcare applications. Human health related data of WBAN are monitored in regular intervals in normal scenario. But in case of sudden illness, accident or any emergency, data rate may abruptly vary. Moreover, based on context, priority of data sending may need to be dynamically changed. Considering all these challenges, MAC protocol design for WBAN is still an emerging field of research. The work here compares different MAC protocols and focuses on research challenges and future directions of MAC protocol design in WBAN based on state-of-the-art with thrust on priority based medical data transmission in emergency healthcare scenario. Here, we have simulated IEEE 802.15.4, IEEE 802.15.6, SMAC and TMAC protocols using Castalia 3.3 and compare their results in term of latency and energy consumption.