A Reliable Multi-Tiered Body Area Network Communication Scheme

摘要

In order to facilitate the energy-efficient transmission of data between body area networks (BAN), several communication schemes in the literature require that a body sensor node (SN) first transmit its data to a co-located BAN coordinator node (CN) which then relays the data to a neighboring BAN. However, recent research has shown that path loss and fading conditions along on-body wireless channels can be more severe than off-body wireless channels thus resulting in intra-BAN transmissions requiring more energy than inter-BAN transmissions when reliability requirements are concerned. In this paper, a BAN Communication Scheme (BANCS) is devised to determine the most energy efficient route for the exchange of data between BANs by accounting for the effect of path loss and fading along on-body and off-body channels. This route is calculated by solving a reliability-constrained optimization problem whose solution overcomes the aforementioned fading conditions while minimizing energy consumption. Through analytical and simulation techniques, it is shown that BANCS provides a significant improvement in energy consumption under reliability constraints when compared against other schemes in the literature. As a result, the incorporation of BANCS into future BANs serves as promising direction towards supporting applications such as the monitoring of military soldier physiological state.