Comparative study of IEEE 802.15.4 and IEEE 802.15.6 for WBAN-based CANet

International audienceIn this paper, we present an overview of IEEE 802.15.4 and 802.15.6 standards. Thereafter, in view of their various strengths and many similarities, we study the possibility of using one of these two norms to implement the body area network (WBAN) of CANet (an innovative ehealth project) scenario according to the nature of the studied sensors. To do so, we considered an hybrid differentiation layer, previously proposed, based on 802.15.4 and we made a classification of CANet ehealth sensors based on IEEE 802.15.6 native superframe periods and priority and service differentiation systems. Each choice between them has its advantages and disadvantages. Thus, it will be necessary to analyse in detail the simulation and prototyping results of 802.15.4 and 802.15.6 norms once implemented in CANet context in order to decide about the standard providing the optimal QoS

Channel estimation and transmit power control in wireless body area networks

Wireless body area networks have recently received much attention because of their application to assisted living and remote patient monitoring. For these applications, energy minimisation is a critical issue since, in many cases, batteries cannot be easily replaced or recharged. Reducing energy expenditure by avoiding unnecessary high transmission power and minimising frame retransmissions is therefore crucial. In this study, a transmit power control scheme suitable for IEEE 802.15.6 networks operating in beacon mode with superframe boundaries is proposed. The transmission power is modulated, frame-by-frame, according to a run-time estimation of the channel conditions. Power measurements using the beacon frames are made periodically, providing reverse channel gain and an opportunistic fade margin, set on the basis of prior power fluctuations, is added. This approach allows tracking of the highly variable on-body to on-body propagation channel without the need to transmit additional probe frames. An experimental study based on test cases demonstrates the effectiveness of the scheme and compares its performance with alternative solutions presented in the literature

Design and performance analysis of human body communication digital transceiver for wireless body area network applications

Wireless body area network (WBAN) is a prominent technology for resolving health-care concerns and providing high-speed continuous monitoring and real-time help. Human body communication (HBC) is an IEEE 802.15.6 physical layer standard for short-range communications that is not reliant on radio frequency (RF). Most WBAN applications can benefit from the HBC's low-latency and low-power architectural features. In this manuscript, an efficient digital HBC transceiver (TR) hardware architecture is designed as per IEEE 802.15.6 standard to overcome the drawbacks of the RF-wireless communication standards like signal leakage, on body antenna and power consumption. The design is created using a frequency selective digital transmission scheme for transmitter and receiver modules. The design resources are analyzed using different field programmable gate array (FPGA) families. The HBC TR utilizes <1% slices, consumes 101 mW power, and provides a throughput of 24.31 Mbps on Artix-7 FPGA with a latency of 10.5 clock cycles. In addition, the less than 10-4bit error rate of HBC is achieved with a 9.52 Mbps data rate. The proposed work is compared with existing architectures with significant improvement in performance parameters like chip area, power, and data rate

Performance Analysis of IEEE 802.15.6 Contention-based MAC Protocol

IEEE International Conference on Communications (IEEE ICC 2015). 8 to 12, Jun, 2015, IEEE ICC 2015 - Communications QoS, Reliability and Modeling, London, United Kingdom.IEEE 802.15.6 facilitates communication in the vicinity of or even inside a human body to serve heterogeneous medical, consumer electronics, and entertainment applications. This standard operates in beacon and non-beacon communication modes, and each mode employs different protocols, including CSMA/CA, for resource allocation on the channel. The CSMA/CA protocol presented in IEEE 802.15.6 allows quick and prioritized access to the channel by differentiating contention window bounds of nodes with different priorities. This paper provides a simple and accurate analytical model to estimate the throughput, energy consumption, and delay of this protocol for different priority classes, under the assumption of a finite number of nodes in saturated and lossy channel conditions. The accuracy of the proposed model is validated by simulations. The results obtained in this paper can be used to design standard priority parameters for medical and non-medical applications

Performance evaluation of IEEE 802.15.6 CSMA/CA-based CANet WBAN

International audienceIn the recent few years, Wireless Body Area networks (WBANs) showed what can be done remotely to greatly improve healthcare systems and facilitate the life to elderly. One of the recent ehealth projects is CANet which aims at embedding a WBAN into a cane to monitor elderly/patients. Our main goal in this paper is to evaluate the performances of the emerging standard IEEE 802.15.6 when applied on different sensors from CANet eHealth project. At this end, we defined a small scenario extracted from CANet, and we assigned IEEE 802.15.6 priorities to the selected cane sensors according to their inherent characteristics. We considered further the mandatory RAP period of IEEE 802.15.6 superframe under the beacon period with superframes mode since it supports both normal and urgent traffic. Our results showed that the contention access behavior of this considered model of simulation depends on several constraints (including the nature of the studied application and the traffic types and frequency). This would be necessarily taken into account to get the most advantage of all features offered by WBANs standard IEEE 802.15.6. Keywords—Medium Access Control (MAC), wireless body area networks (WBANs), E-health, CANet project, wireless sensor networks (WSN), IEEE 802.15.6

Study of MAC Protocols for Mobile Wireless Body Sensor Networks

Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN) also referred to as a body sensor network (BSN), is a wireless network of wearable computing devices. It has emerged as a key technology to provide real-time health monitoring of a patient and diagnose many life threatening diseases. WBAN operates in close vicinity to, on, or inside a human body and supports a variety of medical and non-medical applications. The design of a medium access control is a challenge due to the characteristics of wireless channel and the need to fulfill both requirements of mobility support and energy efficiency.  This paper presents a comparative study of IEEE 802.15.6, IEEE 804.15.4 and T-MAC in order to analyze the performance of each standard in terms of delay, throughput and energy consumption. Keywords: Biomedical, IEEE 802.15.6; T-MAC, IEEE 802.15.4, mobility, low-power communication, wireless body sensor networks, implantable sensors, healthcare applications, biosensors

An Analysis Framework for Inter-User Interference in IEEE 802.15.6 Body Sensor Networks: A Stochastic Geometry Approach

Inter-user interference occurs when multiple body sensor networks (BSNs) are transmitting simultaneously in close proximity to each other. Interference analysis in BSNs is challenging due to the hybrid medium access control (MAC) and the specific channel characteristics of BSNs. This paper presents a stochastic geometry analysis framework for inter-user interference in IEEE 802.15.6 BSNs. An extended Matern point process is proposed to model the complex spatial distribution of the interfering BSNs caused by the hybrid MAC defined in IEEE 802.15.6. We employ stochastic geometry approach to evaluate the performance of BSNs, considering the specific channel characteristics of BSNs in the vicinity of human body. Performance metrics are derived in terms of outage probability and spatial throughput in the presence of inter-user interference. We conduct performance evaluation through extensive simulations and show that the simulation results fit well with the analytic results. Insights are provided on the determination of the interference detection range, the BSN density, and the design of MAC for BSNs