WBANs-Spa: An Energy Efficient Relay Algorithm for Wireless Capsule Endoscopy

Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) are specific purpose sensor networks designed to operate autonomously to connect various medical sensors, located inside and outside of a human body. WCE quickly becomes one of the most popular WBANs applications. Due to finite energy budget of sensor nodes, transmission power should be as low as possible in order to increase the life time of WBANs. To this end, we addressed a relay network model from in body Wireless Capsule Endoscopy (WCE), to on-body relay nodes, and finally to external Access Point (AP) for the energy-efficient of WBANs in heterogeneous environment for realistic medical applications. Also, we proposed WBANs-Shortest Path Algorithm (WBANs-Spa) of relay network to reduce total network power consumption using empirical pathloss model, which could find the optimal multi-hop path based on the network model. Simulation results showed our design was effective for minimizing total network energy consumption in relay network for WBANs, and the effect of on-body relay nodes and external AP deployment was provided.