Towards Power Efficient MAC Protocol for In-Body and On-Body Sensor Networks

Abstract

This paper presents an empirical discussion on the design and implementation of a power-efficient Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol for in-body and on-body sensor networks. We analyze the performance of a beacon-enabled IEEE 802.15.4, PB-TDMA, and S-MAC protocols for on-body sensor networks. We further present a Traffic Based Wakeup Mechanism that utilizes the traffic patterns of the BAN Nodes (BNs) to accommodate the entire BSN traffic. To enable a logical connection between different BNs working on different frequency bands, a method called Bridging function is proposed. The Bridging function integrates all BNs working on different bands into a complete BSN.