MAC Protocol in Wireless Body Area Network for Mobile Health: A Survey and an Architecture Design

Abstract

Wireless body area networks (WBANs) have become a leading solution in mobile health (mHealth). Typically, a WBAN consists of in-body or around-body sensor nodes for collecting data of physiological feature. For a WBAN to provide high throughput and low delay in an energy-efficient way, designing an efficient medium access control (MAC) protocol is of paramount importance because the MAC layer coordinates nodes’ access to the shared wireless medium. To show the difference of MAC protocols between Energy-Harvesting wireless body area networks (EH-WBANs) and battery powered WBANs (BT-WBANs), this paper surveys the latest progresses in energy harvesting techniques and WBAN MAC protocol designs. Furthermore, a novel energy utility architecture is designed to enable sensor node lifetime operation in an EH-WBAN.