MIQoS-RP: Multi-Constraint Intra-BAN, QoS-aware routing protocol for wireless body sensor networks

Abstract

Wireless Body Sensor Networks (WBSNs) are becoming increasing popular in a number of healthcare applications. A particular requirement of WBSNs in a healthcare system is the transmission of time-sensitive and critical data, captured by heterogeneous biosensors, to a base station while considering the constraints of reliability, throughput, delay and link quality. However, the simultaneous communication among various biosensors also raises the possibility of congestion on nodes or transmission links. Consequently, the likelihood of a number of untoward situations increases, such as disruption (high delays), packet losses, retransmissions, bandwidth exhaustion, and insufficient buffer space. The significant level of interference in the network leads to a higher number of collisions and retransmissions. The selection of an optimized route to cope with these issues and satisfy the QoS requirements of a WBSN has not been well-studied in the relevant literature. In this regard, we propose a multi-constraint, Intra-BAN, QoS-Aware Routing Protocol (referred to as MIQoS-RP) which introduces an improved, multi-facet routing metric to optimize the route selection while satisfying the aforementioned constraints. The performance of the proposed protocol is evaluated in terms of average end-to-end delay, throughput and packet drop ratio. The comparison of MIQoS-RP with the existing routing protocols demonstrates its efficacy in terms of the selected criteria. The results show that the MIQoS-RP achieves improved throughput by 22%, average end-to-end delay by 29% and packet drop ratio performance by 41% as compares to existing schemes.