A Traffic Adaptive Priority based MAC Protocol for the Wireless Body Area Networks based on IEEE 802.15.4: TAP-MAC

Abstract

The rapid growth of wireless technology brings a revolutionary change in the network market. Wireless technology facilitates users to establish a network rapidly, but also lets them to establish a network where it is almost impossible for wired technology. Low data rate wireless network was developed to improve the demands of users by adding features of simple architecture, low cost and low power wireless communication. Wireless body area networks (WBANs) have a significant consideration in research as well as in industrial communities. They provide immense opportunities for both non-medical and medical applications. In WBANs, a number of discrete sensors and actuators are connected wirelessly and are placed on the clothes or inside the human body. WBANs have particular needs for medical applications and healthcare, hence, existing standard like IEEE 802.15.4 cannot accomplish the requirements. Hence, a number of medium access control (MAC) protocols, primarily derived from the superframe structure of IEEE 802.15.4, have been designed. Though, they do not provide a distinguished quality of service (QoS) for numerous traffic exist in WBAN. Traffic prioritization is not considered in IEEE 802.15.4. Furthermore, IEEE 802.15.4 neither IEEE 802.15.6 standards does not take into account the traffic load. In this thesis, we propose a MAC protocol called TAP-MAC, according to the priority of the traffic, which will dynamically allocate the CAP period. This allocation is based on the traffic priority and traffic load. Our aim is to adjust the Superframe of MAC protocol according to the traffic type and load monitored in each network with minimum effect on the low priority traffic. Hence, instead of assigning fix superframe duration to each Body area network (BAN) node, duration is assigned according to each node traffic requirement. Performance evaluation results in term of reliability, energy consumption, delay, and throughput are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of MAC protocol.