Exploiting timing channel in intra-body sensor networks

Intra-body sensor networks can radically change the approach to personal health control and care. However, they still need several research issues to be solved. One major issue is related to the need for minimizing the transmitted energy in order to both increase battery duration and reduce heating of biological tissues which may raise health concerns. In this paper a scheme named Intra-Body Transmission Protocol (IB-TxP) is introduced which achieves reduction in the transmitted energy by exploiting the so-called timing channel approach. This is based on establishing a logical channel between a sender and a receiver in which information is transferred in the timing between transmissions. Accordingly, part of the information is encoded in the timing between events, so lowering energy consumption and tissues heating associated to the real bits transmission. An analytical framework is derived for the assessment of IB-TxP and its comparison to traditional transmission schemes. Numerical results show the effectiveness of IB-TxP.