A Survey of MAC Protocols for Cognitive Radio Body Area Networks

The advancement in electronics, wireless communications and integrated circuits has enabled the development of small low-power sensors and actuators that can be placed on, in or around the human body. A wireless body area network (WBAN) can be effectively used to deliver the sensory data to a central server, where it can be monitored, stored and analyzed. For more than a decade, cognitive radio (CR) technology has been widely adopted in wireless networks, as it utilizes the available spectra of licensed, as well as unlicensed bands. A cognitive radio body area network (CRBAN) is a CR-enabled WBAN. Unlike other wireless networks, CRBANs have specific requirements, such as being able to automatically sense their environments and to utilize unused, licensed spectra without interfering with licensed users, but existing protocols cannot fulfill them. In particular, the medium access control (MAC) layer plays a key role in cognitive radio functions, such as channel sensing, resource allocation, spectrum mobility and spectrum sharing. To address various application-specific requirements in CRBANs, several MAC protocols have been proposed in the literature. In this paper, we survey MAC protocols for CRBANs. We then compare the different MAC protocols with one another and discuss challenging open issues in the relevant research.