An Energy efficient MAC for Wireless Body Area Network and its Cross

Layer Performance

Venkateswari. R* a, Subha Rani. S b

a
Assistant Professor b Professor and Head
Department of Electronics and communication Engineering,PSG College of Technology ,Coimbatore-641004,Tamilnadu,India.

Abstract

A Wireless body area network (WBAN) consists of sensors attached to the body surface, implanted under the skin, or dispersed in the
clothing. Due to implanted feature, replacing sensors or charging their battery requires surgery. So there is a need for efficient energy
usage. As the information carried by the nodes is critical, it should be immediately communicated to the monitoring device. Thus the main
goals in a WBAN are to reduce the energy consumption, achieve minimum delay and maximum throughput. In this paper an energy
efficient MAC protocol is developed for WBAN by modifying the Superframe structure of IEEE 802.15.4. This is done by increasing the
number of Guaranteed Time Slots (GTS) and by reducing the Response waiting time, thereby achieving the energy efficiency and low
latency. The Proposed MAC Protocol cross layer performance is also analyzed with the routing protocols AODV (Ad hoc On-Demand
Distance Vector) and DSR (Dynamic Source Routing).

Keywords: energy efficiency; Cross Layer Design; IEEE 802.15.4;AODV;DSR

1. Introduction RF communication between invasive sensor nodes

The wireless sensor networks (WSN) WSN has
undergone a technical boom in the beginning of 21th
century due to advances in MEMS technology and wireless
communication era. The wireless sensor network has plenty
of application such as precision agriculture, smart
buildings, smart cities, etc. One of the predominant
applications of sensor network is related to healthcare
sector. It is used to monitor the vital parameters of the
human being. The network of biosensors attached in and
around the human body to monitor vital signs such as heart
beat, temperature, pressure is termed as Wireless Body
Area Network (WBAN).The Schematic overview of
differences between Wireless Sensor Networks and
Wireless Body Area Networks is given in [1] and [2].
There are significant points to be noted in the Wireless
body area network. As opposed to the wireless sensor
network the WBAN monitoring environment restricted to
human body, heterogeneous data rate, requirement of
biocompatible sensor devices and more variable network
topology due to body movement.
The communication in the Body sensor network is
categorized in to two types ,’In body communication’ is the
implanted inside the human body[5] and ’On body
communication’ is the communication between wearable
sensor nodes. The MICS (Medical Implantable
Communication service band – 402-405 MHz [4] should be
used for in body communication. On body communication
may use ISM or UWB. The communication protocol
should allow simultaneous operation at the same time
[3].The Wireless Body Area Network communication
architecture is categorized in to three types[6] namely intra-
BAN, inter-BAN and Beyond-BAN.I)’ intra BAN
communication’ denotes radio communications of about 2
meters around the human body. ii) ‘inter-BAN
communications’ as the communications between the on
body coordinator and one or more access points (Aps) This
is used to interconnect BAN with the various network such
as WLAN and cellular network iii) ‘Beyond-BAN
communication’ design is intended for use in metropolitan
areas. The application is for an ambulatory patient
travelling from hometown to other location.
The main constraint for the design of efficient
communication protocol for WBAN is low power
consumption. The MAC (Medium Access Control) is
playing vital role for reducing the power consumption. The

Corresponding author: r_venkateswari@yahoo.com

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sensor network MAC protocol should be a low duty cycle
protocol which has active and sleep period to consume less
energy. The structure of low duty cycle MAC protocol is
shown in Fig.1. The comparison of TDMA versus CSMA
MAC protocols are given in[7] . The CSMA based
protocols suffers from collision and TDMA based protocols
suffers from Synchronization overhead. The hybrid
approach results in effective MAC protocol design. The
structure of hybrid MAC protocol is shown in Fig.2 best
suitable for providing good energy efficiency, latency and
high throughput. The MAC superframe structure of the
IEEE 802.15.4 low power and low data rate WPAN
standard is shown in the Fig.3. It satisfies all the above
constraints. The standards defines two types devices
Reduced function device (RFD) and a full function device
(FFD)[8]. The full function devices have the capability of
routing to any device. But RFD can send to only FFD. Each
network will have one coordinator known as PAN
coordinator. In the beacon enabled mode the PAN
coordinator issues beacons. The beacons are used to
synchronize the attached devices. The nodes will access the
medium according to the superframe structure. In the
contention access period(CAP) the access is via slotted
CSMA/CA(Carrier-Sense Multiple Access- Collision
Avoidance) and also acquire its guaranteed time
slots(GTS). In the non-beacon enabled mode the access is
via unslotted CSMA/CA.
The standards related to Wireless Personal Area
Network(WPAN) is shown in the Fig.4. The IEEE 802.15.6
is an emerging Body Area Network standard. Among the
remaining zigbee scores over all because of its flexible and
scalable networking and multi-hop routing features along
with low power consumption [9]. In this paper, a
modification in the superframe structure is done in order to
make it compatible for wireless body area network. The
main purpose of this modification is the existing one can be
used with minor modification until the correct draft of
WBAN has been obtained.
ACTIVE
INACTIVE
Fig 1 Structure of Low duty cycle MAC protocol
CSMA BASED TDMA BASED
Fig 2 Strcture of Hybrid MAC Protocol
Contention G G G G G G G
T T T T T T T
Access Period S S S S S S S
Cxzcxc (CAP)
INACTIVE
Fig 3 Superframe Structure of 802.15.4 MAC Protocol
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The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: In
Section 2, the existing medium Access protocols for the
Wireless Body Area Network are discussed as related
work. Section 3 describes the proposed modification in
IEEE 802.15.4 MAC protocol. Next, the proposed MAC
protocol performance is evaluated through extensive
simulations in Section 4 and section 5 concludes the paper.
Fig 4 WPAN standards
2. Related Work
Many researches have been carried out to modify IEEE
802.15.4 standard to make it suitable for Wireless body
area network. The comparison of IEEE 802.15.4 based
MAC protocols for WBAN has been investigated in
Table.1.The Performance Improvement column tells that in
which metric protocol is better compared to other
protocols.
In[10] authors have modified IEEE 802.15.4 to reduce
transmission delay for the alarm notification in emergent
situations. The bandwidth underutilization occurs if the
biosensor traffic does not completely occupy the GTS slots.
The superframe structure is modified by using the wasted
bandwidth in the Contention free period for alarming
access.
In the priority-guaranteed MAC[11], dedicated control
channels are adopted to make the data channels collision
free in order to support high data rate communications. It
shows significant improvements on throughput and energy
efficiency as compared with the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC.
In decentralized MAC layer protocol[12]the periodic
nature of the biomedical datum is used to implement the
packet scheduler for predicting the channel availability.
The throughput is increased by building this new method
on the standard.
The OCDP based WBAN MAC protocol [13]is mainly
designed for medical and consumer electronics application.
When data burst occurs the node switches to Opportunistic
Contention Decision Period (OCDP) from inactive period.
The latency is improved here by introducing this period.
In ultra-low power MAC[14] the coordinator adjusts the
parameters by using a control algorithm. Feedback
information from distributed sensors in the network is used
to adjust protocol parameters dynamically to achieve best
energy efficiency and latency.
The BodyMAC[15] is a TDMA-based protocol and the
superframe structure consists of downlink and uplink
subframes .The downlink frame is used to accommodate
the on-demand traffic and the uplink frame is used to
accommodate the normal traffic.
 Table 1 Comparison of IEEE 802.15.4 based MAC protocols for WBAN
MAC Protocol
Emergency access mechanism [10]
Priority- guaranteed MAC [11]
Decentralized MAC [12]
OCDP[13]
Ultra-low-power MAC [14]
BodyMAC
[15]
Modification of 802.15.4 MAC for BAN[9]
According to [9]the number of leads required for
medical cases such as heart disease, Patient on ventilator,
Epilepsy is, to the maximum 60. The frame length is
modified such that it accommodates 64 leads and 8 slots are
given for the contention Access period, for completing the
network management activities. The contention free period
and inactive period consists of 64 slots and total super
frame length of 72. The results of [9] show improvement in
the throughput, delay and power consumption compared to
IEEE 802.15.4. This modification is considered in this
paper and another two parameters are modified to make it
more suitable to body area networks as discussed in the
next section.
3. Proposed Methodology
The main idea is to develop a zigbee complaint
communication for wirelessly monitoring vital parameters
of the human body. The Block diagram of proposed scheme
for Body area network is shown in the Fig.5.
Fig5 Block diagram of proposed scheme for Body Area Network
To support time critical and periodic BAN traffic the
GTS slots in the contention free period had been increased.
The algorithm is designed by changing the existing
protocol parameters as discussed below.
3.1 Algorithm phases
The algorithm has several phases similar to the MAC
Performance Improvement
Better performance in energy efficiency and latency
Improved resource efficiency and latency performance.
Achieves high-throughput communication
Achieves improved latency
Improved energy efficiency and latency
Accommodates the on-demand traffic
Performance improvement on throughput, delay and power consumption
superframe structure of 802.15.4. The beacon signal from
the coordinator indicates the starting of the superframe
structure. The devices attached with the coordinator will
access the medium immediately after beacon period via
slotted CSMA/CA. An arbitrary node requiring the
guaranteed time slot(GTS) request via this contention
access period. The PAN coordinator node will respond to
this request. An analysis has been performed on the value
of the response time and these values are modified. After
getting acknowledgement the nodes will access the medium
in the provided GTS slots as given below.
3.1.1Starting the transmission
In slotted CSMA-CA, a transmission can only start at a
backoff period boundary and only if all steps can be
completed at least one interframe space (IFS) period before
the end of the Contention Access period.
3.1.2Response wait time
It is the duration for which a request command waits for
the response command, aResponse Wait Time equal to
32*aBaseSuperframeDuration,
where
aBaseSuperframeDuration=aBaseSlotDuration*aNumSu
perframeSlots.
It has been changed to 16 *aBaseSuperframeDuration.
Reducing this provides reduction in energy loss for the
node sending the request command as shown in Fig 6 and
7.
3.1.3Acknowledgement
If the originator has requested an acknowledgement, the
sender needs aTurnaroundTime to switch from sending to
receiving mode and vice versa.
3.1.4 Contention free period
If any GTSs have been allocated by the PAN
coordinator, the nodes will access through the Guranteed
time slots. For critical medical application upto 64 is given
here. Not all the slots are used for data transmission.
3.1.5Inactive period
In the remaining slots that are not allocated, the node
may enter a low-power mode.
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3.2 Parameters of IEEE 802.15.4 and its modification allocated with one separate GTS slot. By minimizing the
CAP length bandwidth wastage will be reduced.
In the IEEE 802.15.4 the Medium Access mechanism is Modifications in the maximum frame response time and
discussed with several parameters with its typical values. In response wait time will reduce the delay. Because of the
order to optimize the protocol functionality the values of reduction in delay and collisions, power consumption will
these parameters have to be carefully designed. A list of be low. Since the superframe structure is the crucial thing
parameters in beacon enabled mode and its modified values in the MAC protocol, the modifications in the superframe
are given below. structure changes the whole functionality of the MAC
protocol.
3.2.1Default parameter values of IEEE 802.15.4
aNumSuperframeSlots = 16
aBaseSlotDuration = 60
Duration of 1 slot = 960 µs
aMinCAPlength = 440 symbols
= 440 * 16 µs = 7040 µs
aBaseSuperframeDuration=aBaseSlotDuration*aNumSupe
rframeSlots = 60 * 16 symbols = 960 symbols =15.36 ms
aResponseWaitTime =32*aBaseSuperframeDuration (ms)
aMaxFrameResponseTime =10000 symbols

3.2.2Modified Values:
aNumSuperframeSlots = 72
aBaseSlotDuration = 30
Duration of 1 slot = 480 µs
No. of slots in CAP = 8
Total slot duration = 480 * 8 = 3840 µs Fig 6 Effect of Response Wait Time on Average end to end delay
MinCAPlength = 3840 / 16
= 240 symbols
aBaseSuperframeDuration=aBaseSlotDuration*aNumSupe
rframeSlot= 30 * 72 symbols = 2160 symbols = 34.56 ms
aResponseWaitTime=16* aBaseSuperframeDuration (ms)
aMaxFrameResponseTime = 8000 symbols
The effect of Response wait time on average end to end
delay is shown in Fig.6. The effect of Response wait time
on energy consumption is shown in Fig.7.The
aResponseWaitTime has been provided with values 8, 16,
32, 64 and 128. The energy consumption by the network
has been found to be increasing with increasing values.
Also the average end to end delay is higher for higher
values of aResponseWaitTime. While the delay is lesser
when the value is set to 8 and 16 and the corresponding
energy consumption is less when the value is set to 16.
Being the design of energy-efficient MAC protocol as the
main objective, aResponseWaitTime has been set to 16.
The comparison of modified parameter values are given in Fig 7 Effect of Response Wait Time on Energy consumption
the table 2.
Table 2 Modified Parameters
Name of the parameter Default Pradnya Modified 4. Results and Discussion
value H. value
Ghare
et.al[9] The Simulations have been performed on the Wireless
aNumSuperframeSlots
body area network scenarios using the QualNet as
16 72 72
simulation tool. The simulation is done for 10 minutes. The
aBaseSlotDuration 60 30 30 number of leads for a single patient is increased from 1 to
aMinCAPLength 440 240 240 64.The data rate requirement of vital parameters of the
aResponseWaitTime 32 32 16 human being such as heart rate, temperature is less than 1
kbps. To support some other parameter Glucose monitoring
By increasing the number of slots in superframe slots etc. the data rate is kept as 6 kbps/lead.
from 16 to 72 the throughput will be increased due to The superframe length (BI) and the active superframe
reduction in the number of collisions. Each node is duration (SD) are specified by two parameters respectively:

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macBeaconOrder (BO) and the macSuperframeOrder (SO).
For 50% Duty cycle that is DC=0.5, the macBeaconOrder
(BO) is kept as 3 and macSuperframeOrder (SO) is kept as
4. For the 100% duty cycle that is DC=1, the
macBeaconOrder is kept as 4 and macSuperframeOrder is
kept as 4. The Existing denotes beacon enabled mode of
IEEE 802.15.4 superframe. In a single Body area network
the effect of increase in the date rate and increase in the
number of nodes are analysed. The graphs for throughput,
end-to-end delay and power consumption using existing
and modified superframe structure are investigated.
Fig 8. Average Delay versus Number of nodes
Fig 9 Energy consumption versus Number of nodes
The Average delay versus number of nodes is shown in
Fig. 8, the end to end delay for proposed protocol showed
improvement and it is 0.65 times lesser when compared to
[7] protocol. This is because of the reduction in number of
CAP symbols and the nodes respond for a shorter period of
time after the request command to the central coordinator.
The energy consumption versus number of nodes is
shown in Fig.9 The energy consumption for [9] showed
reduction by almost 17 percentage compared to 802.15.4
The proposed method showed further reduction by almost
10.1 percentage due to the fact that the nodes are powered
ON for a shorter response time. When the nodes are
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increased the packet drop rate is also increased due to
collisions. The packet dropped versus number of nodes is
shown in the Fig.10 It indicates that for the proposed
method the number of packets dropped is 0.8 times less
compared to [9].
Fig 10 . Number of packet dropped versus number of nodes
The performance analysis of the existing & proposed
protocols in star topology has been done for different loads
of traffic denoted by packets per second. The simulation
parameters values are given in the table 3
Table 3 .Simulation parameters
Parameter value
Transmission range 35meter
TX-Power 0dBm
Energy model MicaZ mote
Battery model Duracell-AA, 1500 mAhr
Fig 11 Effect of traffic Load
The effect of traffic Load is shown in Fig.11.From
Fig.11, for the star network, the proposed protocol has the
low energy consumption because of the fact that a node
responds for a shorter period of time after the request
command. This causes the nodes to be ON for a shorter
duration thus reducing the energy spent. A cross layer
analysis is also performed to validate the proposed method.
Performance of proposed MAC with the routing protocols
AODV and DSR has been compared with existing IEEE
802.15.4, based on the performance throughput metric. The
cross Layer analysis is depicted in the Fig.12.
In the simulation number of nodes are increased from
1to 64 and calculated the parameters for the same
scenario.DSR routing protocol is performing well compare
to AODV protocol. Compare to combination of routing
protocols with Existing MAC the proposed MAC is giving
better performance. AODV with modified MAC is giving
21% more throughput for 64 nodes when compared to
AODV with normal MAC. Compared to DSR with existing
MAC, DSR with proposed MAC is giving 10.76% more
throughput. Overall DSR with the combination of proposed
MAC is performing well compare to other combination.
Fig 12 Cross layer analysis
5. Conclusion
An efficient MAC protocol for the WBAN has been
designed by modifying the super frame structure of IEEE
802.15.4.As most of the data is sent only in the GTS slots,
it has the inherent advantage of power saving. The
modification in the response time accounts for lower end to
end delay. The proposed MAC protocol performance is
analyzed with the routing protocols AODV and DSR based
on the throughput. Newly proposed MAC protocol is
performing better compared to existing IEEE 802.15.4
MAC protocol for both AODV and DSR routing protocols
but there is change in the performance. Hence the
efficiency of designed protocol should not be decided in
isolation. The cross layer performance need to be analyzed.
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So the cross layer design of networking layers stands as the
most promising alternative to inefficient traditional layered
protocol architectures. The designed algorithm has to be
fed to the Mote for real-time health monitoring
applications.
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