IEEE 802.15.4 Frame Aggregation Enhancement to Provide High Performance in Life-Critical Patient Monitoring Systems
- Publisher:
- MDPI AG
- Publication Type:
- Journal Article
- Citation:
- Sensors, 2017, 17, (2), pp. 1-25
- Issue Date:
- 2017
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In wireless body area sensor networks (WBASNs), Quality of Service (QoS) provision for
patient monitoring systems in terms of time-critical deadlines, high throughput and energy efficiency
is a challenging task. The periodic data from these systems generates a large number of small
packets in a short time period which needs an efficient channel access mechanism. The IEEE 802.15.4
standard is recommended for low power devices and widely used for many wireless sensor networks
applications. It provides a hybrid channel access mechanism at the Media Access Control (MAC) layer
which plays a key role in overall successful transmission in WBASNs. There are many WBASN’s MAC
protocols that use this hybrid channel access mechanism in variety of sensor applications. However,
these protocols are less efficient for patient monitoring systems where life critical data requires limited
delay, high throughput and energy efficient communication simultaneously. To address these issues,
this paper proposes a frame aggregation scheme by using the aggregated-MAC protocol data unit
(A-MPDU) which works with the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC layer. To implement the scheme accurately, we
develop a traffic patterns analysis mechanism to understand the requirements of the sensor nodes in
patient monitoring systems, then model the channel access to find the performance gap on the basis of
obtained requirements, finally propose the design based on the needs of patient monitoring systems.
The mechanism is initially verified using numerical modelling and then simulation is conducted
using NS2.29, Castalia 3.2 and OMNeT++. The proposed scheme provides the optimal performance
considering the required QoS.
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