Node Prioritization and Dynamic Slot Allocation for Emergency Event Communication in Wbans

Abstract

Abstract A leap in the field of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) made the application of this technology widely acceptable for the design of IoT based remote health care devices. Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) are one of them that increasingly leveraging these technologies. WBANs incorporate in body or on body sensor nodes located at different points of the body of the stakeholder to monitor and transmit real-time physiological parameters for remote monitoring. The normal and on demand traffic of such devices are well addressed with various MAC protocols. But the emergency event data communication is spontaneously initiated by the corresponding sensor node and this inadvertent activity can lead to packet collision and data loss, which in turn can lead to life threatening situations. This data loss demands for data retransmission and results in more energy consumption at nodes reducing its lifespan. In this paper a novel Dynamic Node Prioritization (DNP) algorithm is proposed to minimize data collision and data loss and thereby reduced energy consumption. The algorithm prioritizes each node based on the nature of the physiological parameter monitored and regularly re-rank the nodes by analysing the emergency event happening at each node. The scheme also proposes a secondary node concept that can improve the clinical condition analysis. The time slot for emergency event communication is dynamically allocated each time an emergency event is reported by sensor node. The dynamic allocation of time slots for high priority nodes improves the system efficiency and thereby guarantee better emergency event data transfer than the existing systems. The performance of the proposed algorithm is measured and analysed in terms of energy efficiency and latency in the normal, on-demand and emergency events.