PrEEMAC: Priority based energy efficient MAC protocol for Wireless Body Sensor Networks

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.suscom.2021.100510Get rights and content

Abstract

Wearable wireless sensors, or Wireless Body Sensor Network (WBSN), is one of the most recent fields of research in healthcare applications. The sensors are placed on the human body to detect the critical medical parameters and transmit the collected data to a centralized node. Though the devices work at low energy and power constraints, maintenance of such devices is a crucial aspect. In light of this requirement, an efficient medium access control (MAC) protocol should be utilized to extend the life time of the network. In this paper, we propose a new “Priority based Energy Efficient (PrEE) MAC protocol” incorporated with various priorities in predefined devices based on data sensing and normal devices changing to priority when the value is more than the threshold, by modifying IEEE 802.15.4 header bits. The PrEE MAC protocol is designed based on the IEEE 802.15.4 and its Superframe structure. The simulation results show that the energy efficiency and lifetime of the proposed MAC protocol is more as compared to the existing MAC protocol.

Introduction

With a sudden surge of population and the increase in the number of the elderly, a new need has arisen. The existing technologies in health care need to be scaled and re-innovated accordingly to meet the growing challenge of providing solutions for monitoring the health and lifestyle of such an enormous populace.

An example of such technology in recent times is the development of biosensors to continuously monitor the human body, and transmit this data from sensors to the centralized server for analysis and storage. This system uses the Body Area Sensor Network, placed on or inside the individual. The patient does not have to remain in a hospital for the entire duration of observation as the network provides mobility support. This sets a new trend in the area of advanced health care over conventional health care techniques [1]. Also, it manages to be an edge over the existing healthcare monitoring technologies.

Another example of utilizing sensors in our daily life for continuous monitoring is the advent of Smart Cities, that have begun to materialize in our lives with the gradual introduction of the Internet of Things (IoT). These cities are equipped with various kinds of sensors deployed at multiple locations. But there is a persistent risk of such sensors being damaged due to environmental conditions, thefts or vandalism. Moreover, the need for accurate results demands a safe and a continuous uninterrupted power supply. In this scope, Mobile crowd sensing emerges as a powerful solution to address environmental monitoring.

We have achieved excellent heights in the arena of medical diagnosis and treatment techniques, and yet we often come across incidents of people who passed away due to sudden cardiac arrest. As per a survey by World Health Organization (WHO), Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) represents 30 % of all global deaths. Every year, 17.9 million people die of heart attack or strokes. Such deaths can be minimized and prevented using a health care system that facilitates frequent monitoring and regular dosing and alerting [6,7].

This paper aims at catering to such problems by providing a solution that helps in patients’ real time monitoring and analysis.

A WBAN (Wireless Body Area Network) contains several portable low power autonomous sensor nodes used to monitor the functions of the human body for health care; Fig. 1 shows the pictorial representation of BAN structure [31]. Communication takes place from local sensors to the remote monitoring devices [29]. The sensors placed within the skin are known as in-body sensors, while those outside the body are known as on-body sensors [2]. Some of the on-going and completed projects in WBAN for the benefit of patients using this technology are CodeBlue, Mobi Health, iSIM, and UbiMon [3,4]. The WBAN is used to continuously monitor the patients with diseases such as hypertension, Parkinson’s disease, renal failure, post-operative stress and also the sudden infant death syndrome [[8], [9], [10]].

Energy efficiency is the most important aspect in WBAN since the sensor nodes are battery-powered devices with limited lifetime. Sometimes the physical characteristics of a node may damage the human tissue. Although it works on battery, it directly affects the Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol. Therefore, designing an energy-efficient MAC protocol is a major issue for low transmission and processing power, low cost sensor networks. Traditional MAC protocols become unsuitable for WBAN because of their limited bandwidth and resource constraints to support Quality of Services (QoS). The chief goal of MAC protocol for WBAN should be to minimize factors such as power consumption, delay, collision, retransmission and idle time. Since the protocol is employed in medical applications, all data regarding occurrence of any critical event in the human body should reach from the sensor to the controller with minimum possible delay [5].

The Main Contribution in our paper :

point 1: we propose a new “Priority based Energy Efficient (PrEE) MAC protocol” incorporated with various priorities in predefined devices based on data sensing and normal devices changing to priority when the value is more than the threshold.

Point2: We design PrEE MAC protocol based on the IEEE 802.15.4 and its Superframe structure.

Point3: The simulation results show that the energy efficiency and lifetime of the proposed MAC protocol is more as compared to the existing MAC protocol.

Based on the existing MAC protocol, several MAC protocols have been proposed after being subjected to slight modifications. Some of the existing MAC protocols will be discussed later. The rest of the paper is structured as follows: Section II discusses the taxonomy of the wearable computing in defence automation system; the issues and challenges of wearable computing in the 5 G network environment are discussed in Section III; Section IV the prototype for designing the wearable smartwatch in 5 G network; the conclusion of this research is presented in Section V.

Section snippets

Background Work

The MAC protocol is developed to increase the life time of the network. This is achieved by minimizing the power consumption by increasing the sleep time of the node, which is in turn based on the demand wake up executed by the controller. This is based on the wakeup radio by using the additional circuits and a wakeup table is introduced using the real time scenario [11]. IEEE 802.15.1 for short range is developed for cable replacement. It supports multi hop communication and has high energy

Body sensor to coordinator communication

The main objective of the proposed system is to minimize the power consumption, attain low latency and thus increase the lifetime of the network. The proposed methodology is executed with six body sensors in star topology as defined in Fig. 3. The node which acts as a centralized node/coordinator is placed in the chest and others are placed in the wrist, ankle and hip. The protocol has modified the basic concepts of IEEE 802.15.4 and also used the unused super frame header bits. In this

Simulation and results

The performance of PrEE-MAC protocol is compared with Baseline MAC and ZigBee-MAC by using the Castalia Simulator [34]. The simulation used the specification of IEEE 802.15.4, the WSBN star topology with N-1 devices and one Coordinator. A priority Queue is incorporated in Coordinator to improve the better performance of PrEE MAC protocol. We used the default BO and standard slots for both CAP and GTS. The simulation parameters used for the application are tabulated in Table 1.

The following

Conclusion

The proposed MAC protocol PrEE performs better in Low Power Wireless Body Sensor Network in terms of energy consumption, packet transmission and delay when compared to the existing protocols ZigBee and Baseline MAC. The devices and frames prioritized in PrEE MAC help achieve this performance by modifying the concepts of IEEE 802.15.4 standard. A priority Queue mathematical model has been used in Coordinator for GTS allocation and the simulation results show that the proposed MAC protocol

Author statement

We do hereby declare that all authors have contributed equally.

This paper is not presently submitted to any other venue.

Research Contributions

In a nutshell, the significant research contributions of this paper are as follows.

  • Identified all the possible features for the data sensing and normal devices.

  • Identified the performance threshold to make the best use of the devices for wireless body area networks.

  • We have proposed Priority based Energy Efficient (PrEE) MAC protocol which incorporates various priorities in predefined devices

  • Extensive simulation have been done the IEEE 802.15.4 and its superframe structure.

  • Through simulation we

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors report no declarations of interest.

Acknowledgement

The work is funded by Researchers Supporting Project number (RSP-2020/250), King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

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