A robust protocol stack for multi-hop wireless body area networks with transmit power adaptation

Abstract

Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) have characteristic properties that should be considered for designing a proper network architecture. Movement of on-body sensors, low quality and time-variant wireless links, and the demand for a reliable and fast data transmission at low energy cost are some challenging issues in WBANs. Using ultra low power wireless transceivers to reduce power consumption causes a limited transmission range. This implies that a multi-hop protocol is a promising design choice. This paper proposes a multi-hop protocol for human body health monitoring. The protocol is robust against frequent changes of the network topology due to posture changes, and variation of wireless link quality. A technique for adapting the transmit power of sensor nodes at run-time allows to optimize power consumption while ensuring a reliable outgoing link for every node in the network and avoiding network disconnection.