Analysis of quality of service metrics for CSMA/CA protocol configuration in wireless body area networks

The guarantee of Quality of Service (QoS) is a fundamental aspect in the implementation of Wireless Sensor Networks, particularly in Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN). This paper analyzes several QoS metrics in order to guarantee the performance of a WBAN used to monitor patients. Through the definition of an experimental design and using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) to analyze the results, we find the configuration of the Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance protocol (CSMA/ CA) that optimizes the performance in terms of energy consumption, packet loss and delay. We focused on the following parameters: traffic load, macMinBE (BE) and macSuperFrameOrder (SO).The experimental design was implemented both in a simulation environment (OMNeT++) and in a real hardware platform. The result analysis showed that the performance of the network is affected by the three variables, and allowed us to find the optimal values.