Sensor cooperation in wireless body area network using network coding for sleep apnoea monitoring system

Physiological parameters from various wireless body area network (WBAN) sensors such as Electrocardiography (ECG), Electromyography (EMG), Electroencephalography (EEG), Electrooculography (EOG) sensors are monitored for detecting sleep apnoea of a patient. In WBAN communication, those sensors' signals are affected by fading because of reflection, diffraction, energy absorption, shadowing by body, body movement, clothes and the surrounding environment. In traditional point-to-point WBAN communication systems, sensors data are sent directly to the base station which is very susceptible to fading. To combat fading effect, this paper proposes a novel MIMO-based multi-sensor cooperation using energy efficient network coding technique apt in tiny WBAN sensor for sleep apnoea monitoring. We investigate the performance in terms of bit error rate (BER) of the proposed technique in comparisons to direct and cooperative communication approach. The simulation results show that, cooperative communication strategy in WBAN channel provides superior performance compared to non-cooperative communication.