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AbstractWith the promising applications in e-Health and entertainment services, wireless body area network (WBAN) has
attracted significant interest. One critical challenge for WBAN is to track and maintain the quality of service (QoS), e.g., delivery
probability and latency, under the dynamic environment dictated by human mobility. Another important issue is to ensure the
energy efficiency within such a resource-constrained network. In this paper, a new medium access control (MAC) protocol is
proposed to tackle these two important challenges. We adopt a TDMA-based protocol and dynamically adjust the transmission
order and transmission duration of the nodes based on channel status and application context of WBAN. The slot allocation
is optimized by minimizing energy consumption of the nodes, subject to the delivery probability and throughput constraints.
Moreover, we design a new synchronization scheme to reduce the synchronization overhead. Through developing an analytical
model, we analyze how the protocol can adapt to different latency requirements in the healthcare monitoring service. Simulations
results show that the proposed protocol outperforms CA-MAC and IEEE 802.15.6 MAC in terms of QoS and energy efficiency
under extensive conditions. It also demonstrates more effective performance in highly heterogeneous WBAN.
2 R ELATED W ORK
Fig. 1. General architecture of WBAN-based system. IEEE has finalized the 802.15.6 WBAN standard [2],
where multiple MAC techniques, such as scheduled
access, polling, and contention access, are supported
tromyography (EMG), can be relaxed. in a beacon-based superframe. Another related stan-
Maximizing the energy efficiency for the power- dard is Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), where the MAC
hungry body sensor nodes: Body sensors usually layer adopts a TDMA based structure. Sensors pe-
need to work for months or even years without riodically wake up to initiate/schedule and trans-
interruption. It is a non-trivial task to strike a mit the data via the advertising and data channel,
balance between minimized energy and guaran- respectively. However, both 802.15.6 and BLE MAC
teed QoS. For example, more transmission might introduce large overhead in the periodic synchro-
result in higher throughput and lower average nization. Besides, there is no dedicated design for
delay, but will inevitably consume more energy. the dynamic traffic and channel in WBAN, which
Recently, MAC protocols specifically for WBAN could significantly degrade QoS. We now review prior
have been proposed to address the dynamic traffic works that address these issues.
pattern [8], [9] or the energy efficiency [10], [11]. How- Energy Efficiency. Exiting WBAN MAC proto-
ever, they focus on tackling each individual WBAN cols enhanced the energy efficiency primarily by
issue. The unique features of WBAN channel, traffic TDMA multiplexing [8], [10][12] or reducing the
and energy have not been comprehensively studied in communication frequency of beacons [13]. However,
the context of MAC designs. The goal of this research the synchronization of such superframe-based struc-
is to jointly explore the unique features of WBAN tures would consume extra energy. Therefore, energy-
at the physical and application layer, and to design efficient synchronization have been studied. In [11],
a MAC protocol for star-topology WBANs that can the sensors were synchronized via detecting their own
guarantee both QoS and energy efficiency. signal peaks driven by the heartbeat. However, this
In particular, we propose a general time division cannot always be robust since the change of heartbeat
multiple access (TDMA) based MAC protocol that rhythm may not be reflected simultaneously on all
can flexibly address the QoS of heterogeneous sensors the sensors and some sensors, e.g., accelerometers,
in different monitoring contexts (see Section 4.3 for may not be used to extract the heartbeat. Our work
definition) and can maximize the energy efficiency. differs from all these works in that we propose a
The proposed MAC protocol can adapt to the time- new synchronization scheme to dynamically adjust
varying channel and traffic of WBAN by dynamically synchronizing frequency and maximize the interval
optimizing the transmission schedule, i.e., transmission between two synchronization, which could largely
order and transmission duration, of each sensor node. reduce the overhead. More importantly, we do not
Besides, it proactively minimizes the energy consump- independently consider the energy issue. Instead, we
tion of sensor nodes while ensuring desirable deliv- minimize the energy while satisfying QoS constraints
ery probability and throughput. To further reduce via optimal slot allocation.
energy consumption, we embed a new synchroniza- Lossy On-body Channel. The long-lasting deep
tion scheme in the proposed MAC protocol without fading of WBAN is especially troublesome for static
impacting its optimality. Moreover, we develop an TDMA assignment [8], [10][12]. Using static TDMA,
analytical model to investigate the latency perfor- a node will obtain consecutive slots and thus its
mance of the proposed MAC protocol. We explore frames are transmitted one by one. If a frame is
the parameters space and analyze how the proposed lost due to deep fading, the subsequent transmission
protocol can adapt to different latency requirements, would be, most probably, dropped again because
which theoretically guides the real-world deployment. the deep fading of WBAN lasts for such a long
Finally, we evaluate the QoS and energy of the pro- interval (up to 400 ms) that multiple frames could
posed MAC protocol and therein validate the designs be scheduled for transmission by WBAN radio [6].
and analysis by extensive simulations. Our results Consequently, repeated frame loss would occur.
show that the proposed MAC protocol is especially In [14], the authors proposed to reduce frame loss
suitable for highly heterogeneous WBAN and that we using a variable TDMA scheduling algorithm. They
should choose the largest possible superframe length dynamically moved forward or backward nodes
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transmission in such a way that node average delivery and body coupled communications (BCC). However,
probability could be improved. Nevertheless, since the body area communication is restricted to BCC
only one single slot was allocated to a node and the rather than the more commonly deployed RF WBAN.
goal of the algorithm was limited to decreasing node In [19], a receiver-initiated MAC protocol was de-
average loss rate, it was highly likely for high-priority veloped for rapid and robust sensor data delivery.
nodes to undergo unacceptable throughput and frame The authors focused on spectrum access to handle
loss. Recently, CA-MAC protocol that adopted a hy- the inter-BAN interference while not examining the
brid TDMA and contention based superframe was body movement pattern and the resulting challenges
proposed to address the WBAN deep fading [3], for sensor-to-PS transmission. In summary, the pro-
[15]. Thanks to the random backoff in contention posed MAC protocol is essentially different from these
period, the frame transmission from nodes/links are schemes because it targets the body area transmission
interleaved. Therefore, when a node regains its op- by comprehensively exploring the mobility-incurred
portunity of transmission after a delivery failure and channel and traffic characteristics of WBAN. It also
subsequent random backoffs, the link condition might formulates an optimal slot allocation to minimize the
have improved and accordingly the retransmission energy subject to QoS constraints. The new synchro-
might succeed. However, the usage of contention nization scheme and analytical performance model
period could negatively impact the energy efficiency further compliment the energy efficiency and QoS
and channel utilization. In this paper, we instead guarantee.
utilize the collision-free TDMA and then formulate
a slot allocation optimization in order to guarantee
3 S YSTEM M ODEL
the different QoS requirements among heterogeneous
sensors. We also mitigate the impact of fading by opti- 3.1 Basic Framework
mally adjusting transmission order, which is based on We consider the star-topology WBAN, as shown in
formal WBAN channel and traffic model rather than Fig. 1. The PS is not power hungry and hence we
simply depending on the contention to blindly spread only consider power consumption of sensors. The
the transmission in time, as is done in [3], [15]. PS manages the major operations of WBAN, such
Dynamic Traffic. The variation of monitoring con- as resynchronization, context recognition, and com-
texts brings time-varying sensor sampling rate and puting tranmission schedule. We assume there are N
WBAN traffic. This could deteriorate the performance sensor nodes in the WBAN and each node i belongs
of protocols using fixed resource allocation [10][13]. to the sensor nodes set N .
As such, researchers adaptively adjusted TDMA slots We employ a TDMA-based MAC protocol to pre-
[16] or separated the slots into data and control pur- vent collisions, idle listening, and overhearing. As
pose for prompt transmission [8]. In [9], a contention- shown in Fig. 2a, we divide the time axis into pe-
based WBAN system was designed for falls assess- riodic time intervals, called superframes, with constant
ment, where high-priority nodes in current context length T . A superframe consists of beacon, active, and
can interrupt low-priority nodes and aggregate the inactive part. The beacon part is used by the PS to
data for fast transmission. However, this design could broadcast messages to the sensor nodes. The active
introduce severe collisions due to its contention na- part is comprised of consecutive slots and each slot
ture. Besides, it is computationally impractical for can accommodate one frame transmission (including
sensor nodes to decide what is the current context data transmission, ACK reception, and radio transi-
and which types of data needs to be gathered with tion time) from one node. Since the radio turnaround
high priority, which is usually complicated analysis time between transmitting and receiving state is much
rather than simple out-of-bound computation. In [17], smaller than the time for one frame transmission,
the authors used wakeup radio signals to activate the it is disregarded in this paper. The guard time slot
sensor nodes from sleep state and to allocate channel (Tg ) is added in order to prevent slot overlapping
resources when abnormal traffic comes. However, an and perform the proposed synchronization scheme.
extra wakeup circuit is added in traditional sensor After sufficient slots have been reserved for the sen-
nodes, which introduces additional hardware com- sor nodes according to sampling rate requirement,
plexity. Our work, instead, utilizes the centralized the rest of the superframe is considered as inactive
nature of WBANs and allows the PS to adaptively al- part, during which no transmission is scheduled. In
locate the slots based on traffic demand, which adapts order to achieve these functions, we define the MAC
to the dynamic contexts. Thanks to this asymmetric frame format of the proposed protocol based on IEEE
architecture, we distribute the computation of context 802.15.6 standard [2], as shown in Fig. 2b.
switching and slot allocation to the powerful PS.
Cross-layer Designs. The authors in [18] studied
the two-tier sensor-to-PS and PS-to-network commu- 3.2 Channel Model
nications and improved delay, reliability, and energy IEEE 802.15.6 BAN standard has suggested the use
performance by properly using radio frequency (RF) of Markov channel models since experiments have
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Variable
General
MAC Header MAC Frame Body FCS
Superframe T Format
Active Inactive Variable
B
Scheduled for Scheduled for Scheduled Data Frame RX TX BAN
Sampled Data FCS
Frame Control ID ID ID
node 1 node 2 for others
Variable
Beacon Frame RX TX BAN
Syn Info Tx Schedule FCS
Frame Control ID ID ID
Uplink 3 bytes
Data ACK ACK Frame RX TX BAN Syn Info
Downlink FCS
Tg Frame Control ID ID ID (optional)
B -- Beacon
(a) (b)
Fig. 2. a) TDMA-based superframe structure of the proposed MAC protocol; b) MAC frame format of the
proposed MAC protocol.
verified that Markov models can effectively charac- If the channel state of the given slot is known (p0 = 0
terize the WBAN channel dynamics [6], [20]. In this or p0 = 1), we then can estimate the future channel
paper, we model the on-body channel at each link condition using (2). We next present two propositions
(between each sensor node and the PS) during a par- that shed light on the important properties of the
ticular mobility pattern (called activity) as a two-state Markov channel model.
Markov process. A frame can be successfully received Proposition 1: When , p( ) PQ BG
=
in good state while it will be dropped in bad state. PBG
PBG +PGB . The larger Q is, the more (1Q) /Q shrinks
Since measurement studies have shown that channel and the faster p( ) converges.
condition is directly correlated to human activity [6], Proposition 2: Let be a small time interval. Given
[21], the model parameters differ in different activities. Q < 1, we have p( ) < p( + ) if p0 = 0 and p( ) >
Such modeling is feasible since human body presents p( + ) if p0 = 1.
a stable moving pattern under a given activity (e.g., Remark 1: Proposition 1 emphasizes that under a
walking) and thereby the Markov characterization given activity the probability to be good eventually
exists in each link. Besides, the unchanged channel converges to a value that represents the steady frac-
condition during one slot is especially true for WBAN tion of good slots, i.e., the steady delivery probability.
due to its long-lasting nature of channel state [6], e.g., Furthermore, Q signifies the channel variation speed.
up to 400 ms (dozens of frames) in bad state. That is, the channel would vary from good/bad state
Specifically, the Markov transition probability ma- to steady state faster with a larger Q. Proposition 2
trix P can be denoted as, manifests that the delivery probability is either mono-
[ ] tonically increasing or decreasing when the initial
1 PBG PBG
P= (1) channel is bad or good, respectively. The constraint
PGB 1 PGB
(Q < 1) has been shown to hold under extensive
where PGB represents the probability of a good state measurements of typical WBAN settings [14] and
transits to a bad state, i.e., the probability of a nodes hence it is assumed to be true in the following.
frame loss in current slot given its successful transmis-
sion in the previous slot. Similarly, PBG represents the 4 P ROPOSED MAC P ROTOCOL
probability of a bad state transits to a good state. Note 4.1 Basic Operations
that a link may have different transition probability
We first describe the basic operations conducted at the
matrix under different human activities, and different
PS and sensor nodes.
links may have different P due to their heterogeneous
locations. Under a particular activity, however, each 1) PS broadcasts a beacon frame (as the format in
links Markov characterization (P) is fixed [14], [21]. Fig. 2b) with the initial synchronization message,
We denote the probability of a link being in good state including clock information, superframe length
at a given slot as p0 and the sum of PBG and PGB as and slot length. The initial sampling rate and
Q. Then the probability for this link to be good state initial time to transmit/sleep for each sensor
after slots (during the same activity) is [14] are also derived via initial transmission schedule
(random order and equal duration) and embed-
[ ]
[ ] 0 ded in the beacon.
p( ) = 1 p0 p0 (P) 2) Sensors synchronize with PS via initial beacon.
1
PBG p0 PGB [1 p0 ]PBG 3) Sensors receive the sampling rate and transmis-
= + (1 Q) (2) sion schedule in the beacon frame. Then they
Q Q
{ collect the data using received sampling rate and
PBG
PBG (1Q) p0 = 0 schedule the next time to transmit/sleep before
= PQ Q
PGB (1Q)
Q + p0 = 1
BG
Q entering sleep.
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4) Sensors wake up at the scheduled slots and the monotonically varying p( ) in (2), we observe
transmit one or more data frames based on the that the delivery probability for GOOD nodes will
transmission duration. These data will be used decrease from 1.0 to PQ BG
with regard to (w.r.t.) time,
by the PS to recognize the current context. and increase from 0 to PQ BG
w.r.t. time for BAD nodes.
5) PS replies an ACK upon receiving a data frame Remark 2 (Between Set Ordering): Due to such
from a sensor. The resynchronization informa- monotonicity, GOOD (BAD) nodes would enjoy
tion is optionally embedded in the ACK only if a higher (lower) delivery probability if they are
the clock drift would cause frame collision. scheduled to transmit sooner in the upcoming
6) Sensors power off and save energy during oth- superframe. Thus, our first ordering rule is to assign
ers scheduled slots. all GOOD nodes in the former part of a superframe
7) PS analyzes the received sensor data and only before all BAD nodes.
sends out updated sampling rate and trans- Within Set Ordering. As sensor nodes have hetero-
mission schedule via the beacon frame at the geneous link status and QoS demands, it is important
upcoming superframe. The transmission order is to ensure that the delivery probability of node i sat-
first decided by two ordering rules (Section 4.2) isfies a threshold T Hi . We aim at adjusting the order
and the transmission duration is then obtained of nodes within each set such that those individual
by solving the optimal slot allocation problem thresholds can be approached as close as possible.
(Section 4.3). For node i GOOD, if the delivery probability
8) Repeat step 3) through step 7). of its last assigned transmission in the upcoming su-
This way, a sensor i is able to periodically acquire perframe is larger than the threshold T Hi , its frames
these scheduled access information. If it misses a scheduled before this last assigned slot can also enjoy
beacon, it will simply keep asleep during the super- reliable transmission due to its monotonically decreas-
frame and wake up at the next beacon period. We ing delivery probability. We can therefore give the
have found in the evaluations that by increasing the delivery probability constraint for node i, i GOOD,
transmit power of the non-power-hungry PS to -10 p(Di + xi ) T Hi xi ai (3)
dBm, only negligible amount ( 1%) of beacons were
lost, which did not cause any significant impacts on where Di indicates how many slots have passed
the overall performance. Hence, we adopt this simple since the last transmission of node i in the previous
strategy to handle beacon loss. superframe, xi is the index showing which slot is its
last allocated slot in the upcoming superframe, and ai
is the upper bound of this index. That is, we should
4.2 Adjusting Transmissin Order schedule all the transmissions for node i, i GOOD,
In this section, we estimate the dynamic channel sta- before the ai th slot of the upcoming superframe.
tus and thus adjust the transmission order of nodes to Similarly, for node i BAD, if its first scheduled
achieve relatively high delivery probability. Note that transmission in the upcoming superframe enjoys a
although the channel model parameters is fixed for delivery probability larger than the threshold, its other
a certain activity, e.g., walking, the link status is still transmissions can be all reliable. The corresponding
time-varying. The fixed activity only means P is time- delivery probability constraint of node i, i BAD, is
invariant. When the activity is changed, which can
p(Di + yi ) T Hi yi bi (4)
be easily detected by context recognition algorithms
using sensor data (e.g., from accelerometer and/or where yi is the index that shows which slot is the first
inertial sensor) [22][24], the PS only needs to utilize allocated slot for node i in the upcoming superframe,
the updated channel model with new parameters and and bi is the lower bound of such index. That is, we
conduct the channel estimation. The channel model should schedule all the transmissions for node i, i
parameters for typical activities can be pre-collected BAD, after the bi th slot of the upcoming superframe.
from experimental results. Hence, we focus on the Remark 3 (Within Set Ordering): To help each indi-
introduction of channel estimation and transmission vidual GOOD (BAD) node to achieve their delivery
order adjustment under a given activity. probability threshold, we need to order them within
Between Set Ordering. Given that the PS only the GOOD (BAD) set based on the upper bound ai
obtains outdated link status when listening to sen- (lower bound bi ) of their assigned slots. Thus, the
sors in their respective slots, the most recent channel second ordering rule is that a GOOD node with a
status available to the PS is the outcome of the last larger upper bound should be scheduled after the one
allocated transmission for each node in the previous with a smaller upper bound. Similarly, a BAD node
superframe. These most recent outcomes are termed i should be scheduled before node j if bi < bj .
as initial channel state, X0 . We denote sensor nodes By computing all ai s for node i GOOD and all
with initially good and bad channel state as the set bi s for node i BAD, as well as carrying out the two
GOOD = {i|X0,i = 1} = {i|p0,i = 1} and BAD = ordering rules, we can decide the transmission order
{i|X0,i = 0} = {i|p0,i = 0}, respectively. Considering in a channel-aware way.
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4.3 Optimizing Transmission Duration Formally, the corresponding constraint for node i to
We have introduced the adjustment of transmission achieve desirable throughput is given by
order that facilitates reliable transmission. However,
in order to guarantee the delivery probability and ni (RTdata Loh ) Si T (7)
throughput, it is still essential to quantitatively study
the transmission duration of nodes to complete the
slot allocation. In this section, we formulate the optimal where R is the transmission rate of the radio platform,
slot allocation problem, in order to seek the optimal Tdata is the duration of transmitting a data frame, Loh
transmission duration, i.e., the number of assigned is the overhead bits per frame, and Si is the minimum
slots ni , for each node in the upcoming superframe. throughput (derived from sampling rate) currently
Delivery Probability Constraint. We have derived required by application-layer services for node i.
the constraint of delivery probability for the proposed Accordingly, those sensor nodes more related to
WBAN in (3-4). Now we convert them into the for- the new monitoring context (larger Si ) would obtain
mulas w.r.t. the number of assigned slots ni . By using more slots for data transfer. However, other irrelevant
(3), we have explained that all allocated slots for nodes (smaller Si ) would release some or all of the
node i GOOD should be ordered before the ai th slots, reducing the energy cost.
slot so as to meet the threshold T Hi . Thus the total Optimal Slot Allocation. Since the PS can be easily
number of slots scheduled for node i and the nodes recharged, the optimization objective is to minimize
before i should not exceed ai . The delivery probability the total energy consumption of the power-hungry
constraint for node i, i GOOD, can be converted as sensors, subject to the constraints of delivery probabil-
ni + nj ai (5) ity and throughput. The sensors energy consumption
{j|aj <ai }
primarily results from data transmission, ACK recep-
tion, radio wakeup transition (from sleeping to trans-
Similarly, we can also re-write the constraint of deliv- mitting/receiving), and reception of synchronization
ery probability for node i BAD as information. Other energy consumption factors are
ng + nj b i (6) not considered because they are usually multiple or-
{g|ag amax } {j|bj <bi }
ders of magnitude smaller than the energy consump-
tion caused by transmission or reception. Since the
where amax = max{ai |i GOOD}. frequency of wakeup transition is fixed for sensors
Throughput Constraint. To handle the various and the synchronization is impacted by clock drift
types of traffic and the dynamic nature of WBAN, we rather than slot allocation, the objective is equivalent
introduce the concept of monitoring contexts. to minimizing the energy consumption of data com-
Definition 1 (Monitoring Context): A monitoring munications, i.e., the total number of assigned slots,
context is a medical scenario that is decided by in the upcoming superframe. Then we can formulate
diagnosis and human mobility, and is predefined the optimal slot allocation problem as
by doctors. For example, three contexts can be
defined for a healthy 20 year-old person, i.e., normal
(walking/80-120 heart rate), alert (exercising/120-200 min iN ni
heart rate), and emergency (maximum efforts/more s. t. ni (RT
data Loh ) Si T i N
than 200 heart rate) [25]. In different contexts, doctors ni + {j|aj <ai } nj ai i GOOD
require different sampling rate to assist the treatment. n + {j|bj <bi } nj bi
i BAD
{g|ag amax } T g
We aim at adjusting the transmission duration iN ni Tslot i N
(number of slots) of each sensor such that their traffic (8)
requirement in current context can be satisfied. For where Tslot is the duration of a frame transmission
example, the slots for heartbeat data should be in- slot. By using the first constraint, we ensure the
creased during emergency context in order to meet transmitted data is no less than the application-level
the increased sampling rate. This feature is termed as traffic load. We also guarantee the reliable transmis-
context-awareness. To recognize context variation of sion of GOOD and BAD nodes via the second and
the person, the PS collects and analyzes data frames third constraint, respectively. Finally, with the last
from multiple sensors, e.g., via heart rate and motion constraint, the total number of allocated slots can be
data. Notice that context recognition algorithms have limited to the length of the superframe. Considering
been widely studied [22][24]. The protocol can sim- the fact that the constraints and the objective of (8)
ply borrow existing algorithms, which will not affect are all linear, and the number of assigned slots shall
the design of the proposed MAC. be a integer, the formulated problem is an Integer
In order to guarantee the context-aware transmis- Linear Programming problem, which can be solved
sion, the amount of transmitted data of each type of efficiently [26]. By solving (8), the PS can periodically
sensor nodes should be always larger than the mini- compute the optimal transmission duration for each
mum throughput requirement in the current context. node after the transmission order adjustment.
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4.4 Synchronization Scheme wait more time before resynchronization. The PS then
The synchronization overhead is one of the main ob- encapsulates Syn Info field, if any, into an ACK and
stacles for traditional beacon-enabled protocols. In [2], sends it to the corresponding sensor node. The sensor
[15], for example, all the sensor nodes have to receive can accordingly adjust the local clock relying on the
synchronization information periodically through the value of Syn Info after receiving the ACK frame.
beacon frame even if some of them are still synchro- Since the times of resynchronization only depends
nized with the PS. on the property of nodes clocks and is not related
In this section, we propose a new synchronization to transmission order or duration, the proposed syn-
scheme to decrease the synchronization overhead, chronization scheme can be directly added into the
where the sensor nodes only need to resynchronize proposed MAC protocol to reduce overhead whereas
through ACK frames when the clock drift may cause not negatively impacting the optimal slot allocation.
overlapped transmission and they do not have to
synchronize in every superframe. 5 L ATENCY A NALYSIS
After a certain synchronization, the clock drift be- Recall that the transmission order of sensor nodes are
tween the clocks of each sensor node and the PS dynamically moved forward and backward in every
increases w.r.t. time. A sensor node might transmit superframe to enure reliability. This mechanism re-
a frame before or after the beginning of the assigned sults in a distinct latency performance compared with
slot, which might cause overlapped transmission with conventional protocols with fixed transmission order.
other nodes. Thereby, we incorporate a guard time slot Therefore, in this section, we analyze the proposed
into a frame transmission slot after the ACK reception MAC protocol in terms of latency, which is another
in order to avoid such frame collisions. important QoS requirement, especially in heathcare
The length of the guard time slot Tg should be monitoring application. More importantly, we demon-
deliberately set to accommodate both forward and strate the impacts of protocol parameters on latency
backward overlapping. In the proposed MAC, the performance and how we can adjust the parameters
transmission order of sensor nodes is dynamically in order to meet different WBAN requirements.
adjusted in every superframe. The maximum duration
of a node not receiving an ACK from the PS is 5.1 Latency of Normal Context
2T Tslot Tb , where Tb is the duration of a beacon
slot. The maximum duration is achieved when the In a normal monitoring context for WBAN, data
node transmits at the first slot in a superframe and frames are generated with a constant inter-arrival
then transmits at the last slot in the next superframe. time. Due to the throughput constraint in (7), peri-
The maximum clock drift over the maximum duration odically generated frames during a superframe can
between a nodes two receptions of ACK is then be successfully transmitted by the end of the next
(2T Tslot Tb ), where is the frequency tolerance. superframe. Accordingly, the maximum latency for
Since the clock drift could be either forward or back- an arbitrary frame in a normal context is thus 2T
ward, the transmission of a senor could be delayed or Tb TACK Tg , where TACK is the duration for
advanced. To avoid the transmission overlapping, the receiving a complete ACK frame (including Syn Info
guard time slot Tg is therefore given by field). This case occurs when the frame arrives at the
transmission queue just after the nodes assigned slot
Tg = 2(2T Tslot Tb ) (9) which happens to be the first slot of a superframe,
and then is transmitted at the last slot of next su-
T
Note that 2g is the upper bound of the clock drift over perframe. This latency bound (e.g., 300ms in our
the time interval between two receptions of ACK, i.e, evaluations) can generally satisfy the requirement in
only one node is likely yet unnecessary to accumulate normal context [7]. We can also tune the values of the
such a drift. In reality, the clock drift of a node protocol parameters (T , Tb , TACK , etc.) offline before
between two ACK receptions could be any value in the system starts in order to meet more strict latency
T
the range from 0 to 2g . bound.
Regarding the operation procedure of the proposed However, coarse analysis of delay bound is not
synchronization scheme, a sensor node should first sufficient for an abnormal context because its traffic
encapsulate the local clock information (time-stamp) pattern and latency sensitivity is quite diverse. That is,
into the frame control field of a data frame. When a fine-grained and exact delay analysis for each sensor
the PS receives the data frame, it takes the clock is needed. Hence, we primarily focus on the latency
information and compares that with its own clock analysis of abnormal contexts in the following section.
information. If the time interval between the two Moreover, when there is a context switch, we assume
T
clocks exceeds half the guard time slot (i.e., 2g ), the the queued frames at a node will be dropped so that
transmission overlapping may occur. Then the control the PS can receive the most recent sensor data for the
field Syn Info is set as the time interval. Otherwise, no new context. Accordingly, the latency performance of
operation is needed, which means the sensor node can those frames is not evaluated in this paper.
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5.2 Latency of Other Abnormal Contexts transmission slots, we have pslot = . Note that a
Due to the time-varying sampling requirement and node would not necessarily transmit a frame during
body movements, WBAN may be in different types a frame transmission slot since the queue might be
of abnormal contexts, e.g., alert or emergency context. empty then. Besides, we also have pslot + psleep = 1.
In an abnormal context, the inter-arrival time between Therefore, the expected remaining time Tr is given by
two frames in a sensor nodes transmission queue is a
Tr = pslot T r,slot +psleep T r,sleep = T r,slot +(1)T r,sleep
random variable. We model the arrivals of frames at a (13)
sensor node in abnormal contexts as a Poisson process
where T r,slot and T r,sleep is the expected remaining
as some existing WBAN systems [27], [28]. Notice that time of the transmission slot and sleep period, respec-
the frame arrival rate of a sensor at different abnormal
tively. Since a frame tends to arrive halfway through
contexts is different. We thus denote the frame arrival the transmission slot on average and the duration of
rate of node i at the time t as i (t). In a TDMA-based
a slot is fixed at Tslot , we have
system, after a given node finishes the scheduled
transmission slots, it would enter sleep state when Tslot
T r,slot = . (14)
other nodes are scheduled for transmission. For the 2
given node, the experienced sleep can be viewed In contrast, for a given node, the duration of the
as the servers vacation in queueing theory. Hence, sleep period is highly variable depending on many
we model each sensor node as an M/D/1 queueing factors, such as the most recent transmission outcome
system with vacations [29]. We assume frames at each of all nodes and the slot allocation of the previous
node are served in the first come first served manner. superframe. Thus the durations of consecutive sleep
Since it takes Tslot to finish one frame transmission, periods seen by the node can be approximated as
the service rate of node i at the time t is given independent. Therefore, the expected remaining time
1
by i (t) = Tslot . Thus the utilization factor i (t) of the sleep period for a node is approximated as
(i (t) < 1) is given by [29] uniformly distributed in the possible range. In Section
i (t) 6, we will demonstrate the closeness with which
i (t) = = Tslot i (t) (10) the analytical approximation matches the simulation
i (t)
results. Due to the adjustment of transmission order,
We now derive the expected frame latency, which the duration of the remaining sleep period for node i
consists of queueing and transmission latency. To ranges from 0 to 2T Tb 2nmin,i Tslot , where nmin,i is
simplify the notation, we consider an arbitrary frame the minimum number of allocated slots for node i to
arrival, regardless of the context the system belongs Si T
satisfy traffic requirement, i.e., nmin,i = RTdata Loh .
to (i.e., regardless of t). We first derive the queueing The maximum remaining sleep period is achieved
latency. For a given node, a frame may arrive when when the node is ordered as the first one in the current
the node is experiencing the frame transmission slot superframe while as the last one in the next super-
or the sleep period. The frame has to wait until the frame. Thus the expected remaining sleep period for
frame transmission slot or the sleep period ends. Then node i is approximated as
it also needs to wait for the transmission of the frames
that arrive at the queue before it. Hence, the expected 2T Tb 2nmin,i Tslot
T r,sleep (15)
queueing latency of an arbitrary frame Tq is given by 2
E[N ] By using (12-15), the expected queueing latency of an
Tq = Tr + (11) arbitrary frame Tq for node i can be obtained. Finally,
the expected latency of a frame Ttotal for node i is
where Tr is the expected remaining time for the the sum of the expected queueing latency and the
transmission slot or sleep period and E[N ] is the expected transmission latency, i.e.,
expected number of frames that are already in the
queue. According to Littles law [29], the expected Ttotal =Tq + Tdata
number of frames in the queue seen by the given node Tslot 2T Tb 2nmin,i Tslot
is E[N ] = Tq . Therefore, Tq can be expressed as + + Tdata
2(1 ) 2
2T Tb
Tq = Tr + Tq = Tr + Tq =( nmin,i )Tslot + + Tdata
2(1 ) 2
(12) (16)
Tr
= Tq =
1 According to (16), when the proposed MAC pro-
Now we derive the expected remaining time Tr . tocol is deployed (i.e., when the protocol parameters
We denote the probability that a frame arrives during including T , Tslot , Tb , Tdata and Loh are fixed), the ex-
the given nodes transmission slot and sleep period pected frame latency of node i in an abnormal context
as pslot and psleep , respectively. Since the utilization is determined by 2(1) and nmin,i . Notice that nodes
factor represents the fraction of time for frame with higher traffic requirement have larger value of
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2(1) and nmin,i . We also find that nmin,i changes In Section 6, we will show that the latency of abnor-
more significantly than 2(1) when the traffic re- mal frames is monotonically and smoothly increasing
quirement varies, which indicates that the variation as T increases, which assists us to choose appropri-
trend of nmin,i will decide the trend of Ttotal . Such ate protocol parameters when deploying applications
relation always holds under practical settings of QoS with different latency bounds.
parameters as we will demonstrate in Section 6.
Remark 4: Nodes with higher traffic requirement 6 P ERFORMANCE E VALUATIONS
would achieve lower frame latency, which inher-
ently meets the heterogeneous latency requirement of In this section, we evaluate the performance of the
WBAN. Besides, when a given nodes traffic require- proposed MAC protocol in three aspects: reliability,
ment dynamically increases or decreases, based on energy efficiency, and latency.
(16), the frame latency of this node would adaptively Simulation Modules. We built a event-driven
decreases or increases, respectively. WBAN system using MATLAB. The application mod-
We have showed above how the proposed MAC ule generates constant-bit rate and Poisson traffic
protocol addressing heterogeneous and dynamic traf- depending on the context. The MAC module supports
fic. However, Ttotal may not always be able to satisfy multiple basic access schemes, such as scheduled ac-
the individual latency bound under a specific abnor- cess and random access. By combining or modifying
mal context. Although we may increase the traffic these schemes, one can implement a specific MAC
requirement of a particular node to decrease its ex- protocol for evaluations. For the proposed protocol,
pected latency, such operation is usually not allowed we also embed YALMIP [30], an MATLAB-based op-
and may not work well. Hence, we sometimes need to timization toolbox, to solve the optimization in (8).
carefully configure the protocol parameters before the The channel module simulates the deep-fading on-
deployment of the proposed MAC protocol. Further body channel by first generating a channel state of
converting (16), Ttotal can be derived as follows. a slot based on the Markov model in Section 3.2
and then computing a received power satisfying that
Tslot Tb channel state. In other words, if the simulated channel
Ttotal +T nmin,i Tslot + Tdata
2(1 ) 2 state is good, the channel module would signal a
Tslot Tb received power higher than the receiver sensitivity to
= +T + (Tslot TACK Tg )
2(1 ) 2 the receiver and vice versa for bad state. The receiver
Si T Tslot would finally compare the received power against
sensitivity to drop/receive the frame. Note that we
R(Tslot TACK Tg ) Loh
(17) adopt the values of PQ BG
and Q rather than the tran-
sition probabilities to generate the Markov channel
According to (17), the expected frame latency of node states as they have realistic indication, i.e., steady
i is determined by the protocol parameters, such as T , delivery probability and channel variation speed.
Tslot , Tb , TACK , Tg and Loh , under a certain abnormal Parameters Setting. We configure a typical WBAN
monitoring context and WBAN hardware platform that has one PS and five sensor nodes [7]. The maxi-
(i.e., the traffic requirement and transmission rate is mum transmission rate of the transceivers is 220.1931
known). Since Tg = 2(2T Tslot Tb ), in this case Kbps. We set the frame transmission slot as 10 ms,
we can easily adjust the values of T , Tslot , Tb , TACK , because the deep fading of on-body channel can last
and Loh for the protocol in order to meet a specific as short as 10 ms [6]. One superframe lasts for T = 150
latency bound of that context. Note that the proposed ms. Considering the physical layer header, the length
MAC protocol is based on a Markov channel model, of a beacon frame and a complete ACK frame (includ-
where the channel state is unchanged during a frame ing Syn Info field) is set to be 32 bytes and 16 bytes,
transmission slot. Hence, the duration of a slot Tslot respectively. The overhead for synchronization, i.e.,
should be carefully set based on empirical channel the length of Syn Info field, is set to be 3 bytes. Thus
measurements, which makes Tslot improper to be the duration of transmitting a beacon frame, receiving
changed as we want. The value of Loh would also a complete ACK frame, and receiving an ACK frame
better not be changed because a stable amount of without Syn Info field can be obtained by dividing
overhead is needed for achieving protocol functions. their corresponding length by the transmission rate.
Furthermore, since the possible values of Tb and TACK Due to the constant Tslot and TACK , the duration
are relatively small, even very significant change of reserved for transmitting a data frame Tdata is dictated
these parameters will not have desirable impacts on by Tg , which is given by (9). The overhead of a frame
the latency. Therefore, we arrive at the following Loh is set to be 13 bytes. The frequency tolerance is
remark regarding MAC deployment guideline. 100 parts per million, which means the clock will lose
Remark 5: The superframe length T should be 100 time units over one million time units.
changed to achieve the latency bound of a given Regarding the QoS requirements, we assume there
context before the MAC deployment. are one normal context and four abnormal contexts,
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10
11
Loss reduction over TDMA (%)
12
Energy per kilo data bits (uJ)
240
264 180 0
0 300 600 900 1200 1500 1800 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 Alert Semi-urgent Urgent Emergency 300 600 900 1200 1500 1800
Superframe length (ms) Span of long-term delivery prob. Abnormal contexts Superframe length (ms)
13
14
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vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 4451, Jan. 2010. Hefei, Anhui, China, in 1998 and 2001, respectively, and the Ph.D.
[12] S. Marinkovic, E. Popovici, C. Spagnol, S. Faul, and W. Mar- degree in electrical engineering from Syracuse University, Syracuse,
nane, Energy-efficient low duty cycle mac protocol for wire- NY, in 2006. Currently, he is an Associate Professor with the School
less body area networks, IEEE Trans. Inf. Technol. Biomed., of Information Science and Technology, University of Science and
vol. 13, pp. 915925, Nov. 2009. Technology of China. His research interests are signal processing
[13] B. Kang, J. Im, C. Chung, and J. Kim, A energy-efficient and communications in wireless sensor and body area networks.
system by reducing beacon listening for periodic vital sign Zhisheng Yan is a PhD student at Computer Science and Engi-
monitoring, in Proc. IEEE 54th International Midwest Sympo- neering Department, State University of New York at Buffalo. His
sium on Circuits and Systems (MWSCAS), Seoul, South Korea, research interests lie in perception, processing and networking of
Aug. 2011, pp. 14. multimedia data. Currently, his research is focused on energy-saving
[14] Y. Tselishchev, L. Libman, and A. Boulis, Reducing trans- mobile display and wireless HTTP adaptive streaming.
mission losses in body area networks using variable tdma Chang Wen Chen (F04) is a Professor of Computer Science and
scheduling, in Proc. 2011 IEEE International Symposium on a Engineering at the State University of New York at Buffalo, USA.
World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks (WoWMoM), Previously, he was Allen S. Henry Endowed Chair Professor at
Jun. 2011, pp. 110. Florida Institute of Technology from 2003 to 2007, a faculty member
[15] B. Liu, Z. Yan, and C. W. Chen, CA-MAC: A hybrid context- at the University of Missouri - Columbia from 1996 to 2003 and
aware mac protocol for wireless body area networks, in at the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, from 1992 to 1996.
Proc. 13th IEEE International Conference on e-Health Networking He has been the Editor-in-Chief for IEEE Trans. Multimedia since
Applications and Services (Healthcom), Columbia, MO, Jun. 2011, 2014. He has also served as the Editor-in-Chief for IEEE Trans.
pp. 213216. Circuits and Systems for Video Technology from January 2006 to
[16] Z. Yan and B. Liu, A context aware mac protocol for medical December 2009 and an Editor for Proceedings of IEEE, IEEE T-
wireless body area network, in Proc. 7th International Wire- MM, IEEE JSAC, IEEE JETCAS, and IEEE Multimedia Magazine. He
less Communications and Mobile Computing Conference (IWCMC and his students have received eight (8) Best Paper Awards or Best
2011), Istanbul, Turkey, Jul. 2011, pp. 21332138. Student Paper Awards and have been placed among Best Paper
[17] M. Ameen, J. Liu, S. Ullah, and K. S. Kwak, A power Award finalists many times. He is a recipient of Sigma Xi Excellence
efficient mac protocol for implant device communication in in Graduate Research Mentoring Award in 2003, Alexander von
wireless body area networks, in Proc. 2011 IEEE Consumer Humboldt Research Award in 2009, and SUNY-Buffalo Exceptional
Communications and Networking Conference (CCNC), Las Vegas, Scholar - Sustained Achievements Award in 2012. He is an IEEE
USA, Jan. 2011, pp. 11551160. Fellow and an SPIE Fellow.
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