Inter-wireless body area network scheduling algorithm for livestock health monitoring

This paper proposes an inter-wireless body area network scheduling algorithm for animal health monitoring. An optimization problem is formulated first to jointly reduce the energy consumption per unit time and to improve the packet success rate. Due to the combinatorial complexity of the optimization problem, a two-step heuristic solution algorithm is proposed. The first step is to find the optimal transmit power and packet payload size for each sensor by using local information. Then the second step uses a best effort method to assign time slot to each of the wireless body area networks. At the end of step two, the effect of interference is known, and this knowledge helps to determine the optimal frame size among all the feasible choices after several iterations of objective value calculation or a period of performance learning. The simulation results on packet success rate and energy consumption show that the proposed best effort time slot allocation method outperforms the color-based scheduling algorithm.