Reliable Energy-Efficient Dynamic-TDMA MAC Protocol for Wireless Body Area Networks

Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) is a reliable and proper channel access mechanism for Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN). In this paper a dynamic-TDMA Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol for WBANs is presented. To achieve a high rate of reliability, a novel dynamic channel allocation mechanism is introduced This mechanism uses a novel collision-free field, called Basic Time Slot (BTS) to control communications in the network. Using BTS field, different conditions e.g. emergency, on-demand and regular traffic transmission are distinguished and handled properly. To investigate the performance of the protocol, analytical equations and regarding simulation results for power consumption, duty cycle, packet delivery delay and channel utilization are presented. Existence of reserved time slots and reallocation mechanism in case of packet failure keeps packet delivery delay at a minimum value which is an important metric in evaluation of network reliability. It is shown that proposed protocol keeps power consumption and duty cycle of sensor nodes at a low value and increases channel utilization rate, compared to static-TDMA protocols.

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