Scalable and robust medium access control protocol in wireless body area networks

Wireless body area network (WBAN) solution is an emerging technology to resolve the small area connection issues around human body, especially for the medical applications. Based on the integrated superframe structure of IEEE 802.15.4, this paper proposes a modified medium access control (MAC) protocol for WBAN with focus on the simplicity, dependability and power efficiency. Considering the support to multiple physical layer (PHY) technologies including ultra-wide band (UWB), the slotted ALOHA is employed in the contention access period (CAP) to request the slot allocation. Mini-slot method is designed to enhance the efficiency of the contention. Moreover, sufficient slot allocation in the contention-free period (CFP) makes the proposed protocol adaptive to the different traffic including the medical and non-medical applications. Simulation results show that the protocol effectively decreases the probability of collision in a CAP and extends the CFP slots to support more traffic with quality of service (QoS) guarantee.