An enhanced frame transmission method for medical devices with ultra low power operation

Radio modules for future medical devices are required to minimize their energy consumption while maximizing the reliability of frame transmission. For medical devices in wireless body network, TDMA-based protocols can be candidates, but they have low energy efficiency in a wireless interference environment. In this paper, we propose an enhanced continuous frame transmission (CFT) method which is a hybrid TDMA and random access MAC protocol with carrier sensing method. CFT controls the frame transmission epochs considering the effect of interference that changes according to the number of neighbor wireless devices. Simulation results show that CFT method has higher efficiency compared to conventional TDMA based methods in a interference environment.