A Link Quality Estimator for Power-Efficient Communication Over On-Body Channels

The human body has an important effect on the performance of on-body wireless communication systems. Given the dynamic and complex nature of the on-body channels, link quality estimation models are crucial in the design of mobility management protocols and power control protocols. In order to achieve a good estimation of link quality in WBSNs, we combine multiple body-related factors into a model that includes: the transmission power, the body position, the body shape and composition characteristics and the received signal strength indicator (RSSI) as an indicator of link quality. In this paper, we propose the Anfis Link Quality Estimator (A-LQE) that has been trained with RSSI values measured at different transmission power levels in a sample of 37 human subjects. Once the accuracy and reliability of our proposed model have been analysed, we apply the model to adapt the transmission power to the link characteristics for energy optimization. The obtained average energy savings reach the 26% in comparison with the maximum transmission power mode.