Document Type : Full Research Paper

Authors

• Bita Salimi Qadi
• Mehdi Golsorkhtabaramiri

Department of Computer Engineering, Babol Branch, Islamic Azad University, Babol, Iran

Abstract

Wireless body area networks (WBANs) are specific kinds of wireless sensor network which have been widely used in many areas, especially for health monitoring in the areas of health services and healthcare. Among the most important challenges concerning these networks are performance, high throughput and increasing network lifespan. One of the possible ways to increase network lifetime is to use energy harvesting possibility. In energy harvesting WBANs, the energy of the sensor nodes does not end, but upon reaching a threshold, the node goes into a power-consuming mode and becomes blocked and does not participate in the network operation until it reaches the required energy. In this paper, an energy-efficient routing protocol for energy harvesting WBANS is proposed. In this protocol, the medical sensor nodes on the patient's body have the ability of energy harvesting while the routing method and transmitter node are used to transfer data from sensor nodes to the sink. This method uses single hob routing when the distance between the sensor node and the sink is less than that of the sensor node to the transmitter node. Also, if emergency data is detected, a single hob routing is used to send data, otherwise, multi hob routing is used to do so. Also, to increase throughput during energy harvesting, the sensor node does not block, but sends the data to its nearest neighbor. This protocol has been able to improve network throughput and lifetime. We used energy harvesting to increase network lifetime and routing techniques to reduce energy consumption.

Keywords

• Wireless Sensor Body Area Networks
• Energy Harvesting
• Routing
• Network Life-Time
• Health Monitoring

Main Subjects

• Human Computer Interaction / HCI