New priority MAC protocol for wireless body area networks

The rapid advancements in wireless communication technologies and micro-electronics systems have fostered the development of small and intelligent micro-components that incorporate sensing devices and wireless communications into a single miniature circuit that are wearable or implementable inside the human body for the purpose of medical and healthcare applications. These components when deployed are mainly known as WBANs for Wireless Body Area Networks. One of the main issues in such networks is the medium access techniques mainly for those data which could be urgent. The design of a medium access control protocol for a WBAN is a challenge due to the characteristics of wireless channel, the diversity of traffic, access latency and the need for minimization of energy consumption. Based on the integrated super frame structure of IEEE 802.15.4 and IEEE 802.15.6, an hybrid medium access control protocol named Priority MAC (PMAC) is proposed in this paper. In PMAC protocol, data channels are separated from control channels and the priority is given to the life critical traffic (emergency traffic). Furthermore, a sleep mode is used in order to save energy of the wearable wireless sensors and hence increase their lifetime.