Review on MAC Protocols in Energy-Harvesting Wireless Body Area Networks

Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) have become a leading solution in Mobile Health (mHealth). Typically, a WBAN consists of in-body or around-body sensor nodes for collecting data of physiological feature. For a WBAN to provide high throughput and low delay in an energy-efficient way, designing an efficient Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol is of paramount importance because the MAC layer coordinates nodes´ access to the shared wireless medium. To show the difference of MAC protocols between Energy-Harvesting wireless body area networks (EH-WBANs) and battery powered WBANs (BT-WBANs), this article surveys the latest progresses in energy harvesting techniques and WBAN MAC protocol designs.