Transmit Power Adaptation for Optimizing Energy Consumption in WBANs

Packet reception rate (PRR) and energy consumption are two important metrics when designing a wireless body area network (WBAN). Due to posture changes and influences from the environment, the wireless links in WBANs have a relatively low quality that varies over time. Due to the limited size of wireless body sensors and their power supply, energy consumption should be as small as possible. This thesis presents a study about power adaptation techniques for WBANs and gives an implementation of a reliable and robust transmit power adaptation mechanism. It aims to optimize the energy consumption of the entire WBAN while ensuring PRR requirements. Experiments with nodes placed on a human body are done and the results are used in further simulations to test and verify the quality and performance of the designed mechanism. The transmit power adaptation mechanism presented in this thesis ensures PRR application requirements for different postures at the cost of at most 10% extra energy compared to the optimal configuration.