Optimizing Data Forwarding from Body Area Networks in the Presence of Body Shadowing with Dual Wireless Technology Nodes

摘要

In this paper we are concerned with the problem of data forwarding from awireless body area network (WBAN) to a gateway when body shadowing affects theability of WBAN nodes to communicate with the gateway. To solve this problem wepresent a new WBAN architecture that uses two communication technologies. Onenetwork is formed between on-body nodes, and is realized with capacitivebody-coupled communication (BCC), while an IEEE 802.15.4 radio frequency (RF)network is used for forwarding data to the gateway. WBAN nodes that haveblocked RF links due to body shadowing forward their data through the BCC linkto a node that acts as a relay and has an active RF connection. For thisarchitecture we design a network layer protocol that manages the twocommunication technologies and is responsible for relay selection and dataforwarding. Next, we develop analytical performance models of the medium accesscontrol (MAC) protocols of the two independent communication links in order tobe used for driving the decisions of the previous algorithms. Finally, theanalytical models are used for further optimizing energy and delay efficiency.We test our system under different configurations first by performingsimulations and next by using real RF traces.