Traffic priority-aware medical data dissemination scheme for IoT based WBASN healthcare applications

Abstract

Wireless Body Area Sensor Network (WBASN) is an automated system for remote health monitoring of patients. WBASN under umbrella of Internet of Things (IoT) is comprised of small Biomedical Sensor Nodes (BSNs) that can communicate with each other without human involvement. These BSNs can be placed on human body or inside the skin of the patients to regularly monitor their vital signs. The BSNs generate critical data as it is related to patient’s health. The data traffic can be classified as Sensitive Data (SD) and Non-sensitive Data (ND) packets based on the value of vital signs. These data packets have different priority to deliver. The ND packets may tolerate some delay or packet loss whereas, the SD packets required to be delivered on time with minimized packet loss otherwise it can be life threating to the patients. In this research, we propose a Traffic Priority-aware Medical Data Dissemination (TPMD2) scheme for WBASN to deliver the data packets according to their priority based on the sensitivity of the data. The assessment of the proposed scheme is carried out in various experiments. The simulation results of the TPMD2 scheme indicate a significant improvement in packets delivery, transmission delay and energy efficiency in comparison with the existing schemes.