Medium access control protocol based on time division multiple access scheme for wireless body area network

Abstract

In recent years, the demand for wireless body area network (WBAN) technology has increased, driven by advancements in medical and healthcare applications. WBAN consists of small, low-power, and heterogeneous sensor devices attached inside or outside the body for continuous health monitoring. Medium access control (MAC) is pivotal in addressing WBAN challenges by ensuring reliability and energy efficiency under a dynamic environment caused by body movement. Therefore, to tackle these challenges, this paper presents a MAC protocol based on time division multiple access (TDMA) to enhance the WBAN performance. The proposed TDMA-MAC protocol employs a one-periodic scheduled-based access method to provide reliable data transmission while satisfying the WBAN requirements. The proposed protocol is compared to the IEEE 802.15.6 MAC, enhanced packet scheduling algorithm MAC (EPSA-MAC), and concurrent MAC (C-MAC) protocols based on the performance metrics of packet delivery ratio (PDR), network throughput, energy consumption, and average delay. The simulation results show that the TDMA-MAC protocol outperforms its competitors as it could achieve up to 98% PDR, 30% enhanced throughput, 30% energy optimization, and 20% improvement in average delay.