Towards Energy Saving Wireless Body Sensor Networks in Health Care Systems

The fact that the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC does not fully satisfy the strict wireless body sensor network (BSN) requirements in healthcare systems highlights the need for the design of new scalable MAC solutions, which guarantee low-power consumption to all specific sorts of body sensors and traffic loads. While taking the challenging healthcare requirements into account, this article aims at the study of energy consumption in BSN scenarios. For that purpose, the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC limitations are first examined and other potential MAC layer alternatives further explored. Our intent is to introduce energy-aware radio activation polices into a high-performance distributed queuing medium access control (DQ MAC) protocol and evaluate its energy-saving achievements, as a function of the network load. To do so, a fundamental energy-efficiency theoretical analysis for DQ MAC protocols is hereby for the first time provided. By means of computer simulations, its performance is validated using IEEE 802.15.4 MAC system parameters. The achieved outcome shows that the proposed DQ MAC scheme outperforms IEEE 802.15.4 MAC energy efficiency in all possible BSN scenarios.