BodyMAC: Energy efficient TDMA-based MAC protocol for Wireless Body Area Networks

Wireless body area networks (WBANs) enable placement of tiny biomedical sensors on or inside the human body to monitor vital body signs. The IEEE 802.15.6 task group is developing a standard to optimize WBAN performance by defining the physical layer (PHY) and media access control (MAC) layer specifications. In this paper an energy efficient MAC protocol (BodyMAC) is proposed. It uses flexible bandwidth allocation to improve node energy efficiency by reducing the possibility of packet collisions and by reducing radio transmission times, idle listening and control packets overhead. BodyMAC is based on a Downlink and Uplink scheme in which the Contention Free Part in the Uplink subframe is completely collision free. Three types of bandwidth allocation mechanisms allow for flexible and efficient data and control communications. An efficient Sleep Mode is introduced to reduce the idle listening duration, especially for low duty cycle nodes in the network. Simulation results show superior performance of BodyMAC compared to that of the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC.