An Experimental Study of Dynamic Capabilities in a Wireless Body Area Network

Nowadays, medical technology is very important for patient care. The evaluation and planning of treatment need to keep the information for the benefit of patients. Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) is a wireless communication technology which can help to communicate measurement data from the human body with different requirements. Here, WBANs can monitor the important signals from the human body such as electrocardiogram (ECG), electromyography (EMG), heart rate, blood pressure, and others. Data transmission via wireless communication networks is one of the challenges to obtain high network efficiency and low data loss. This paper presents an experimental study of dynamic capabilities in WBANs, where various packet sizes, different packet inter-arrival times, and different number of nodes applied in the network are tested. By this propose, how such important factors affect WBAN performances can be investigated. Additionally, the optimal values of such factors set for WSANs are illustrated. The experiment has been implemented using TelosB sensor nodes with the IEEE 802.15.4 standard. Experimental results demonstrate that the packet size, the packet inter-arrival time, and the number of nodes are the important factors which significantly affect the WBAN communication reliability as indicated by the packet delivery ratio.