Elsevier

Computers in Human Behavior

Volume 51, Part B, October 2015, Pages 1205-1215
Computers in Human Behavior

Co-LAEEBA: Cooperative link aware and energy efficient protocol for wireless body area networks

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.12.051Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Proposed model gives energy efficient communications for human body in WBAN.

  • Link aware communications.

  • Cooperative routing decreases path loss.

  • Cooperative routing allows more frequent data gathering.

Abstract

Performance evaluation of Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) is primarily conducted in terms of simulation based studies. From this perspective, recent research has focused on channel modeling, and energy conservation at Network/MAC layer. Most of these studies ignore collaborative learning and path loss. In this paper, we present Link-Aware and Energy Efficient protocol for wireless Body Area networks (LAEEBA) and Cooperative Link-Aware and Energy Efficient protocol for wireless Body Area networks (Co-LAEEBA) routing schemes. Unlike existing schemes, the proposed work factors in collaborative learning and path loss. Cost functions are introduced to learn and select the most feasible route from a given node to sink while sharing each others distance and residual energy information. Simulation results show improved performance of the proposed protocols in comparison to the selected existing ones in terms of the chosen performance metrics.

Introduction

Sensor nodes attached to or implanted inside the human body, constitute a WBAN. Advancements in technology make it possible to integrate the whole system on a single chip which is affordable and comfortable for the person under observation. The core concept behind WBANs is the provision of remote monitoring of human body’s functions and its surrounding environment. Another fascinating aspect of WBANs is the integration of such networks with the emerging technologies like mobile phones and Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), which makes their use more appealing in terms of quick, reliable and accurate delivery of information. Depending on the required parameters to be sensed, different sensors and different network topologies are required.

As the aging population increases, the number of persons who need medical care or nursing is growing rapidly. Hence, the work load for the medical doctors and nurses becomes heavier and heavier. Applying Medical Information and Communication Technology (MICT) to medical and health-care services is one approach to improve the above situation and provide a high quality medical support (Ahmed et al., 2014). Main roles of MICT include the following aspects (Ahmed et al., 2014):

  • 1.

    Network formation with high security and reliability for data delivery.

  • 2.

    Collection and transmission of various physiological parameters from sensors.

  • 3.

    Ranging and positioning of sensors to find location of objectives wireless technology.

WBANs are required to operate properly for long duration of time without any battery recharge or replacement, especially for in-body (implanted) sensors. Therefore, energy management is one of the major concerns for WBANs protocols. Continuous data sensing and transmission, and greater distance between communicating nodes may cause more energy consumption. In case of single-hop communication, nodes which are at a greater distance from the sink die quickly because of more energy utilization in distant transmission. Whereas, multi-hop communication causes increase in the energy consumption of forwarding nodes which are closer to the sink. One of the key challenges in designing an efficient routing protocol is to maximize network lifetime and stability period by using the merits of both multi-hop and single-hop communication. Various challenges faced by the field of WBANs include scalability, data protection, bio-compatibility, context awareness and proper data transfer.

In WBAN, successful transmission of information from a source (node) to destination (sink) is of extreme significance, i.e., throughput needs to be enhanced. Unlike individual learning, collaborative learning provides solution to this problem. In collaborative learning, two or more nodes learn together to enhance system performance in terms of desired objectives (Miltiadis, 2010, Penalvo et al., 2012). We use instructional collaborative learning; cooperative learning (Penalvo, Palacios, & Lytras, 2012), where nodes share each others resources to communicate effectively in terms of successfully received packets. However, it is not necessary that it also enhances the overall network performance. Cooperative communication makes use of multi-cast routing in which a single source node transmits its data to more than one nodes at the same time.

Cooperative routing allows more frequent data gathering, hence data loss is least expected. Transmissions from different nodes are generally affected by different and statistically independent noise and fading. The destination node can combine the received signals using traditional combining methods such as Fixed Ratio Combining (FRC), Maximal Ratio Combining (MRC) or Selection Combining (SC) and obtains diversity to overcome fading. Diversity obtained through multi-path transmissions is referred to as cooperative diversity. It is a powerful technique to increase robustness in the presence of channel fading. Cooperative diversity is a kind of spatial diversity that can be obtained without use of multiple antennas. It is helpful when time, frequency, and spatial diversity through the use of multiple antennas are not feasible.

In this paper, we propose a new cooperative routing protocol: Co-LAEEBA which is an extension of LAEEBA protocol (Ahmed et al., 2014). We compare its working with LAEEBA and other existing WBAN protocols M-ATTEMPT (Javaid, Abbas, Fareed, Khan, & Alrajeh, 2013) and SIMPLE (Nadeem et al., 2013). Our proposed model, based on cooperative routing, guarantees higher throughput by finding cooperative nodes through the shortest path route algorithm. A mathematical model is also presented in this paper which is based on a linear three-node arrangement in which Amplify-and-Forward (AF) technique is employed at the relay and FRC is utilized at sink. Channel impairments which are considered in this study are shadowing or slow-fading, path-loss, cumulative noise effects, etc.

Rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides some related work. Section 3 describes the motivation behind this research. Models of proposed protocols are presented in Sections 4 LAEEBA: the first proposed protocol, 5 Co-LAEEBA: the second proposed protocol. Simulation results are shown in Section 6 and paper is concluded in Section 7.

Section snippets

Related work

Many routing protocols for WBANs are designed by considering different objectives, such as energy efficiency, quick and reliable delivery of data, and efficient use of available resources. In Javaid, Abbas, et al. (2013), authors propose M-ATTEMPT; a routing protocol for heterogeneous WBANs. In this protocol, a prototype is defined for deploying heterogeneous sensors on human body. Direct communication is used for on-demand data, whereas multi-hop communication is used for normal data delivery.

Motivation

WBANs are used to monitor human health with limited energy resources. It is important that data sensed by nodes must be reliably received by a medical specialist for further analysis. In Ahmed and Javaid (2014), authors present an opportunistic protocol which facilitates mobility at the expense of low throughput and additional hardware cost of relay node. As sink is attached to wrist, it may go away from transmission range of any sensor node. In such scenarios, sink utilizes relay node to

LAEEBA: the first proposed protocol

In this section, we present a routing protocol for WBANs. Considering the routing under energy harvesting constraint in mind, we improved the network lifetime, energy consumption of the network as well as the path loss of the link between the nodes.

In LAEEBA, path selection is done in such a way that a path with minimum number of hops is selected; direct communication is chosen for emergency data and multi hop is chosen for normal data delivery. Thus, relay nodes forward the received data to

Co-LAEEBA: the second proposed protocol

In Co-LAEEBA, a path route with minimum number of hops is selected for data transmission. Direct communication is utilized for emergency data whereas normal data is delivered through multi-hops. Relay nodes can easily forward the received data to sink using cooperation. We analyze our protocol in terms of path loss and network lifetime. To validate the performance of Co-LAEEBA, we compare it with the existing WBAN routing protocols; LAEEBA, SIMPLE and M-ATTEMPT. The following subsection gives

Simulation results and discussion

Key performance metrics for both protocols are defined in the following subsections.

Conclusion and future work

In this paper, we have proposed mechanisms to route data with minimum path-loss over the link in WBANs, in which the merits of single-hop and multi-hop routing are utilized. In the proposed schemes, cost functions are introduced to learn and select the most feasible route from a given node to sink while sharing each others distance and residual energy information. Moreover, avoidance of redundant transmission via cooperative learning further facilitates the desired objectives. Validation of the

Acknowledgements

The authors extend their appreciation to the Research Centre, College of Applied Medical Sciences and the Deanship of Scientific Research at King Saud University for funding this research.

References (29)

  • N. Javaid et al.

    M-ATTEMPT: A new energy-efficient routing protocol for wireless body area sensor networks

    Procedia Computer Science

    (2013)
  • A. Ahmed et al.

    RE-ATTEMPT: Energy-efficient routing protocol for wireless body area sensor networks

    International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks

    (2014)
  • S. Ahmed et al.

    LAEEBA: Link aware and energy efficient scheme for body area networks

  • S. Ahmed et al.

    Co-CEStat: Cooperative critical data transmission in emergency for static wireless body area network

    Journal of Basic and Applied Scientific Research

    (2014)
  • S.K. Chen et al.

    A reliable transmission protocol for ZigBee-based wireless patient monitoring

    IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine

    (2012)
  • P.K. Chong et al.

    Surface-level path loss modeling for sensor networks in flat and irregular terrain

    ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks (TOSN)

    (2013)
  • E. Damiani et al.

    Guest editorial: Special issue on human-centered web science

    World Wide Web

    (2010)
  • G.G. De Oliveira Brante et al.

    Energy efficiency analysis of some cooperative and non-cooperative transmission schemes in wireless sensor networks

    IEEE Transactions on Communications

    (2011)
  • K. El-Darymli

    Amplify-and-forward cooperative relaying for a linear wireless sensor network

  • T. Himsoon et al.

    Lifetime maximization by cooperative sensor and relay deployment in wireless sensor networks

  • A.S. Ibrahim et al.

    Distributed energy-efficient cooperative routing in wireless networks

    IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications

    (2008)
  • Javaid, N., Khan, N. A., Shakir, M., Khan, M. A., Bouk, S. H., & Khan, Z. A. (2013). Ubiquitous healthcare in wireless...
  • Javaid, N., Yaqoob, M., Khan, M. Y., Khan, M. A., Javaid, A., & Khan, Z. A. (2013). Analyzing delay in wireless...
  • N. Javaid et al.

    Measuring fatigue of soldiers in wireless body area sensor networks

  • Cited by (108)

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text