An Energy efficient MAC for Wireless Body Area Network and its Cross Layer Performance

A Wireless body area network (WBAN) consists of sensors attached to the body surface, implanted under the skin, or dispersed in the clothing. Due to implanted feature, replacing sensors or charging their battery requires surgery. So there is a need for efficient energy usage. As the information carried by the nodes is critical, it should be immediately communicated to the monitoring device. Thus the main goals in a WBAN are to reduce the energy consumption, achieve minimum delay and maximum throughput. In this paper an energy efficient MAC protocol is developed for WBAN by modifying the Superframe structure of IEEE 802.15.4. This is done by increasing the number of Guaranteed Time Slots (GTS) and by reducing the Response waiting time, thereby achieving the energy efficiency and low latency. The Proposed MAC Protocol cross layer performance is also analyzed with the routing protocols AODV (Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector) and DSR (Dynamic Source Routing).