Energy Efficient Heartbeat-Based MAC Protocol for WBAN Employing Body Coupled Communication

Abstract

Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) are a fast-growing field fueled by the number of wearable devices developed for countless applications appearing on the market. To enable communication between a variety of those devices, the IEEE 802.15.6 standard was established. However, this standard has some intrinsic limitations in addressing the heterogeneity of the network nodes in terms of activity, data rates (from less than bit/s to multiple Mbit/s), energy availability, form factor, and location on, around or inside the body. To address these concerns, an alternative model is proposed that could serve as an extension of the IEEE 802.15.6 Standard. At its core is an adaptive and low-overhead synchronization scheme based on heartbeat sensing. This forms the base for a TDMA-based (Time Division Multiple Access) Media Access Control (MAC) protocol dedicated to multi-tier networks. While this effort focuses specifically on Capacitive Body-Coupled Communication (C-BCC), other physical layers can be easily incorporated as well. Based on these premises, this paper compares various random-access slot allocation approaches to accommodate the multiple data rates matching the system requirements, while incorporating a duty-cycling strategy anchored by heartbeat detection. This work proposes a novel, flexible, and robust solution, making use of heartbeat synchronization and addressing the corresponding challenges. It efficiently interconnects multiple device types over a wide range of data rates and targets a mesh of stars topology. At the cost of an increased communication latency, the proposed protocol outperforms the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC standard in terms of energy efficiency by a factor of at least 12x in a realistic scenario.

All‐day wearable health monitoring system

“…To alleviate the problem of transmission signal reduction while maintaining the quality of service, F I G U R E 2 Main components required to implement an all-day monitoring system communication methods (adaptive channel coding, 27,28 transmission power scaling, 29 multiple-input multiple-output [MIMO], 30,31 novel transceiver architecture, 32 and QoSaware media access protocols 33 ) are reported. Technological advancements likewise smart textiles, 34,35 magnetic induction, [36][37][38][39] and body-coupled communications [40][41][42] also show potential. Smart textiles can reduce telecommunication power overhead and simplify networking schemes to improve market utilization by lowering costs, ensuring ease of cleaning, and encouraging standardization in manufacturing.…”

A Sub-100-μW 0.1-to-27-Mb/s Pulse-Based Digital Transmitter for the Human Intranet in 28-nm FD-SOI CMOS

“…In a complete solution, specific electrodes matched to the desired impedance should be designed. Regarding the receiver requirements, these have been addressed in [4]. From the system analysis with classical RF models, it is estimated that a receiver with a sensitivity of −104 dBm and −77 dBm, at low and high data rates respectively, would allow for communication up to 50 cm on-body.…”

“…Moreover, the surface wave body-coupled link has been successfully demonstrated on-body using an offthe-shelf receiver. Future work will focus on the design of 1) a fully integrated solution with on-chip body-bias generation and periodic calibration, 2) the design of a receiver to demonstrate a full data transfer on-body, 3) electrode design with emerging flexible electronics and proper impedance matching, 4) and implementation of the MAC protocol [4] for a full demonstration of the HI network [41].…”

“…In [4] a decentralized network topology was proposed. It presents a "mesh-of-star" topology where Hubs are interconnected with each other in a mesh topology and the Leaves are connected in a star topology with a Hub as the local central node (Fig.…”

PHY-DTR: An Efficient PHY based Digital Transceiver for Body Coupled Communication using IEEE 802.3 on FPGA Platform

“…Botero et al [26] review the HBC channel characteristics' issues using different coupling techniques with different measurement approaches. Slot et al [27] present the heartbeat-based MAC architecture for BCC applications. The TDMA based MAC protocol is introduced for packet transmission and reception in capacitive BCC architecture for heartbeat sensing.…”