Energy consumption optimization based on transmission distance for wireless on-body communication

Energy consumption minimization is a key concern for wireless sensor nodes, especially for wireless body area network (WBAN) in which sensors operate in close vicinity to, on or even inside a human body. In this paper, a system level energy consumption model with transmission distance and transmission rate for on-body wireless communication link is addressed. Based on analysis of the trade-off between circuit energy and transmission energy on distance, a threshold distance which is responsible for the proportion of the transmission energy and circuit energy is derived. Then different optimal schemes needed for various distance are presented; finally, an illustrative example shows that a 59.77% or even more energy saving is achievable by using the optimized scheme, compared with baseline scheme which just simply sets the transmission rate to the minimum, when transmission distance is below the threshold distance, in which circuit energy is comparable to transmission energy consumption.