A CROSS-LAYER OPPORTUNISTIC MAC/ROUTING PROTOCOL FOR RELIABLE COMMUNICATION IN WIRELESS BODY AREA NETWORKS

Recent innovations in sensor design and communication systems have enabled a
new sub-category of wireless networks which is known as Wireless Body Area
Network (WBAN). WBAN is a network of wearable sensor nodes that sense
physiological signals of a body. The development of protocols for WBAN is facing
several challenges due to body shadowing, heterogeneous nature, environmental
interference, limited energy resources, low transmission power and less number of
nodes. Loss of packets becomes a major challenge in WBAN because it may severely
affect the monitoring of a patient, especially when vital signs are being monitored.
Numerous routing, Media Access Control (MAC) and cross-layer techniques solve
many issues in wireless networks that also exist in WBAN. However, these
techniques are not suitable for WBAN due to its unique characteristics. Currently, the
development ofMAC and routing protocols for WBAN is limited.