Priority Data Transmission Schemes for a Wireless Sensor Network on BAN

Among the most recurrent Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) employment is the biopotential signals monitoring (e.g. electrocardiograms, electroencephalograms, electrogastrograms) that allows transmitting the body organ response from a person. Within the WSN’s focused on bioelectrical studies, the energy analysis is essential indeed, given that sensors are devices of minimal dimensions and implies batteries tend to be small and have short-lifetime. In the present research we proposed two priority schemes to enhance the network performance by giving transmission priority to certain nodes. In a first scheme, nodes have different priorities according to the data type they are reporting on. Hence, nodes that sense more relevant data have higher priority to use the channel compared to nodes reporting less important data. For the second scheme, the aim is to prolong the system lifetime by assigning higher transmission probability to nodes with higher residual energy levels while nodes with little energy left, perform fewer transmissions. We show that the performance of the system is indeed enhanced by the introduction of such schemes.