A PPAM technique for energy efficient UWB sensor Body Area Networks

Limiting the power consumption to increase the lifetime of the nodes is a basic issue in wireless sensor networks. The energy efficiency requirement becomes essential in specific scenarios, like the one related to in-body networks of implantable biomedical sensors: prolonging the battery lifetime is of primary importance. A suitable design of the communication protocol and transmission technique may contribute to the sensor power autonomy. This paper presents and discusses a low power consumption communication scenario among sensors, based on Ultra Wide Band - Pulse Position Amplitude Modulation (UWB-PPAM) technology, able to significantly simplify the communication protocol, though preserving multiple access and error robustness capabilities. The performance of the proposed technique are discussed analytically and through numerical simulations.