A Novel Protocol with Patient and Node Identification for Optical WBAN with Inherent Security and Interference Rejection

The wireless body area network (WBAN) has emerged as a new technology for e-healthcare that allows real time monitoring of patients using miniaturized wearable and implantable sensors. An important concern in such networks is the secure transmission, without burdening the energy requirements. In this paper, a new energy efficient protocol is presented with enhanced inherent security, interference rejection and patient/node identification. The energy usage is low as there is no additional encryption circuitry required. Moreover, the nodes can sleep in the slots when they are not transmitting or receiving. The protocol implementation is experimentally demonstrated using low cost IR transceiver and Arduino Microcontroller. Experimental results reveal the successful transmission and reception of measured parameters over short ranges with sufficient accuracy. Furthermore, a MATLAB based mobile application is developed which helps to set up a database in distributed manner and subsequently allow the user to monitor, visualize and share the measured readings remotely.