Performance evaluation of wake-up radio based wireless body area network

Abstract. The last decade has been really ambitious in new research and development techniques to reduce energy consumption especially in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Sensor nodes are usually battery-powered and thus have very limited lifetime. Energy efficiency has been the most important aspect to discuss when talking about wireless body area network (WBAN) in particular, since it is the bottleneck of these networks. Medium access control (MAC) protocols hold the vital position to determine the energy efficiency of a WBAN, which is a key design issue for battery operated sensor nodes. The wake-up radio (WUR) based MAC and physical layer (PHY) have been evaluated in this research work in order to contribute to the energy efficient solutions development. WUR is an on-demand approach in which the node is woken up by the wake-up signal (WUS). A WUS switches a node from sleep mode to wake up mode to start signal transmission and reception. The WUS is transmitted or received by a secondary radio transceiver, which operates on very low power. The energy benefit of using WUR is compared with conventional duty-cycling approach. As the protocol defines the nodes in WUR based network do not waste energy on idle listening and are only awakened when there is a request for communication, therefore, energy consumption is extremely low. The performance of WUR based MAC protocol has been evaluated for both physical layer (PHY) and MAC for transmission of WUS and data. The probabilities of miss detection, false alarm and detection error rates are calculated for PHY and the probabilities of collision and successful data transmission for channel access method Aloha is evaluated. The results are obtained to compute and compare the total energy consumption of WUR based network with duty cycling. The results prove that the WUR based networks have significant potential to improve energy efficiency, in comparison to conventional duty cycling approach especially, in the case of low data-reporting rate applications. The duty cycle approach is better than WUR approach when sufficiently low duty cycle is combined with highly frequent communication between the network nodes

Diseños de capa cruzada para redes inalámbricas de área corporal energéticamente eficientes: una revisión

RESUMEN: El diseño de capa cruzada se considera una poderosa alternativa para dar solución a las complejidades introducidas por las comunicaciones inalámbricas en redes de área corporal (WBAN), donde el modelo clásico de comunicaciones no ha exhibido un desempeño adecuado. Respecto al problema puntual de consumo de energía, hemos preparado la presente revisión de las publicaciones más relevantes que tratan la eficiencia energética para WBAN usando diseño de capa cruzada. En este artículo se proporciona una revisión exhaustiva de los avances en aproximaciones, protocolos y optimizaciones de capa cruzada cuyo objetivo es incrementar el tiempo de vida de las redes WBAN mediante el ahorro de energía. Luego, se discute los aspectos relevantes y deficiencias de las técnicas de capa cruzada energéticamente eficientes. Además, se introducen aspectos de investigación abiertos y retos en el diseño de capa cruzada para WBAN. En esta revisión proponemos una taxonomía de las aproximaciones de capa cruzada, de modo que las técnicas revisadas se ajustan en categorías de acuerdo a los protocolos involucrados en el diseño. Una clasificación novedosa se incluye para hacer claridad en los conceptos teóricos involucrados en cada esquema de capa cruzada y para luego agrupar aproximaciones similares evidenciando las diferencias con otras técnicas entre sí. Nuestras conclusiones consideran los aspectos de movilidad y modelamiento del canal en escenarios de WBAN como las direcciones para futura investigación en WBAN y en aplicaciones de telemedicina.ABSTRACT: Cross-layer design is considered a powerful alternative to solve the complexities of wireless communication in wireless body area networks (WBAN), where the classical communication model has been shown to be inaccurate. Regarding the energy consumption problem, we have prepared a current survey of the most relevant scientific publications on energy-efficient cross-layer design for WBAN. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive review of the advances in cross-layer approaches, protocols and optimizations aimed at increasing the network lifetime by saving energy in WBANs. Subsequently, we discuss the relevant aspects and shortcomings of these energy-efficient cross-layer techniques and point out the open research issues and challenges in WBAN cross-layer design. In this survey, we propose a taxonomy for cross-layer approaches to fit them into categories based on the protocols involved in the cross-layer scheme. A novel classification is included to clarify the theoretical concepts behind each cross-layer scheme; and to group similar approaches by establishing their differences from the other strategies reviewed. Our conclusion considers the aspects of mobility and channel modeling in WBAN scenarios as the directions of future cross-layer research for WBAN and telemedicine applications

Particle Swarm Optimization for Interference Mitigation of Wireless Body Area Network: A Systematic Review

Wireless body area networks (WBAN) has now become an important technology in supporting services in the health sector and several other fields. Various surveys and research have been carried out massively on the use of swarm intelligent (SI) algorithms in various fields in the last ten years, but the use of SI in wireless body area networks (WBAN) in the last five years has not seen any significant progress. The aim of this research is to clarify and convince as well as to propose a answer to this problem, we have identified opportunities and topic trends using the particle swarm optimization (PSO) procedure as one of the swarm intelligence for optimizing wireless body area network interference mitigation performance. In this research, we analyzes primary studies collected using predefined exploration strings on online databases with the help of Publish or Perish and by the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis (PRISMA) way. Articles were carefully selected for further analysis. It was found that very few researchers included optimization methods for swarm intelligence, especially PSO, in mitigating wireless body area network interference, whether for intra, inter, or cross-WBAN interference. This paper contributes to identifying the gap in using PSO for WBAN interference and also offers opportunities for using PSO both standalone and hybrid with other methods to further research on mitigating WBAN interference

Opportunities and Challenges for Error Correction Scheme for Wireless Body Area Network: A Survey

This paper offers a review of different types of Error Correction Scheme (ECS) used in communication systems in general, which is followed by a summary of the IEEE standard for Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN). The possible types of channels and network models for WBAN are presented that are crucial to the design and implementation of ECS. Following that, a literature review on the proposed ECSs for WBAN is conducted based on different aspects. One aspect of the review is to examine what type of parameters are considered during the research work. The second aspect of the review is to analyse how the reliability is measured and whether the research works consider the different types of reliability and delay requirement for different data types or not. The review indicates that the current literatures do not utilize the constraints that are faced by WBAN nodes during ECS design. Subsequently, we put forward future research challenges and opportunities on ECS design and the implementation for WBAN when considering computational complexity and the energy-constrained nature of nodes

Game-Theoretic Relay Selection and Power Control in Fading Wireless Body Area Networks

The trend towards personalized ubiquitous computing has led to the advent of a new generation of wireless technologies, namely wireless body area networks (WBANs), which connect the wearable devices into the Internet-of-Things. This thesis considers the problems of relay selection and power control in fading WBANs with energy-efficiency and security considerations. The main body of the thesis is formed by two papers. Ideas from probability theory are used, in the first paper, to construct a performance measure signifying the energy efficiency of transmission, while in the second paper, information-theoretic principles are leveraged to characterize the transmission secrecy at the wireless physical layer (PHY). The hypothesis is that exploiting spatial diversity through multi-hop relaying is an effective strategy in a WBAN to combat fading and enhance communication throughput. In order to analytically explore the problems of optimal relay selection and power control, proper tools from game theory are employed. In particular, non-cooperative game-theoretic frameworks are developed to model and analyze the strategic interactions among sensor nodes in a WBAN when seeking to optimize their transmissions in the uplink. Quality-of-service requirements are also incorporated into the game frameworks, in terms of upper bounds on the end-to-end delay and jitter incurred by multi-hop transmission, by borrowing relevant tools from queuing theory. The proposed game frameworks are proved to admit Nash equilibria, and distributed algorithms are devised that converge to stable Nash solutions. The frameworks are then evaluated using numerical simulations in conditions approximating actual deployment of WBANs. Performance behavior trade-offs are investigated in an IEEE 802.15.6-based ultra wideband WBAN considering various scenarios. The frameworks show remarkable promise in improving the energy efficiency and PHY secrecy of transmission, at the expense of an admissible increase in the end-to-end latency

System design and performance analysis of wireless body area networks

One key solution to provide affordable and proactive healthcare facilities to overcome the fast world population growth and a shortage of medical professionals is through health monitoring systems capable of early disease detection and real-time data transmission leading to considerable improvements in the quality of human life. Wireless body area networks (WBANs) are proposed as promising approaches to providing better mobility and flexibility experience than traditional wired medical systems by using low-power, miniaturised sensors inside, around, or off the human body and are employed to monitor physiological signals. However, the design of reliable and energy efficient in-body communication systems is still a major research challenge since implant devices are characterised by strict requirements on size, energy consumption and safety. Moreover, there is still no agreement regarding QoS support in WBANs. The first part of this work concentrates on the design and performance evaluation of WBAN communication systems involving the ‘in-body to in-body’ and ‘in-body to on-body’ scenarios. The essential step is to derive the statistical WBAN path loss (PL) models, which characterise the signal propagation energy loss transmitting via intra-body region. Moreover, from the point of view of human body safety evaluation, the obtained specific absorption rate (SAR) values are compared with the latest Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.15.6 Task Group technical standard and the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) safety guidelines. Link budget analysis is then presented using a range of energy-efficient modulation schemes, and the results are given including the transmission distance, data rate and transmitting power in individual sections. On the other hand, major quality of service (QoS) support challenges in WBANs are discussed and investigated. To achieve higher lifetime and lower network energy consumption, different data routing protocol methods, including incremental relaying and the two-relay based routing technique are taken into account. A set of key QoS metrics for linear mathematical models is given along with the related subjective functions. The incremental relaying routing protocol promises significant enhancements in in-body WBAN network lifetime by minimising the overall communication distance while the two-relay based routing method achieves better performance in terms of emergency data transmission and high traffic condition, QoS-aware WBANs design. Moreover, to handle real-time high data transmission applications such as capsule endoscope image transmission, a flexible QoS-aware wireless body area sensor networks (WBASNs) model is proposed and evaluated that can bring novel solutions for a realistic multi-user hospital environment regarding information packet collision probability, manageable numbers of sensor nodes and a wide range of data rates

Joint optimal relay location and power allocation for ultra-wideband-based wireless body area networks

© 2015, Ding et al.; licensee Springer. In this paper, we study the joint optimal relay location and power allocation problem for single-relay-assisted ultra-wideband (UWB)-based wireless body area networks (WBANs). Specifically, to optimize spectral efficiency (SE) for single-relay cooperative communication in UWB-based WBANs, we seek the relay with the optimal location together with the corresponding optimal power allocation. With proposed relay-location-based network models, the SE maximization problems are mathematically formulated by considering three practical scenarios, namely, along-torso scenario, around-torso scenario, and in-body scenario. Taking into account realistic power considerations for each scenario, the optimal relay location and power allocation are jointly derived and analyzed. Numerical results show the necessity of utilization of relay node for the spectral and energy-efficient transmission in UWB-based WBANs and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme in particular for the around-torso and in-body scenarios. With the joint optimal relay location and power allocation, the proposed scheme is able to prolong the network lifetime and extend the transmission range in WBANs significantly compared to direct transmission

Wireless Techniques for Body-Centric Cooperative Communications

Body-centric and cooperative communications are new trends in telecommunications field. Being concerned with human behaviour, body-centric communication networks, also known as Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs), are suitable for a wide variety of applications. The advances in the miniaturisation of embedded devices to be placed on or around the body, foster the diffusion of these systems, where the human body is the key element defining communication characteristics. Cooperative communications paradigm, on the other hand, is one of the emerging technologies that promises significantly higher reliability and spectral efficiency in wireless networks. This thesis investigates possible applications of the cooperative communication paradigm to body-centric networks and, more generally, to Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Firstly, communication protocols for WBANs are in the spotlight. Performance achieved by different approaches is evaluated and compared through experimentation providing guidelines for choosing appropriate protocol and setting protocol parameters to meet application requirements. Secondly, a cooperative Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) scheme for WBANs is presented. The scheme, named B-MIMO, exploits the natural heterogeneity of the WBAN propagation channel to improve energy efficiency of the system. Finally, a WSN scenario is considered, where sensor nodes cooperate to establish a massive MIMO-like system. The analysis and subsequent optimisation show the advantages of cooperation in terms of energy efficiency and provide insights on how many nodes should be deployed in such a scenario