Design of Temperature-Aware Routing for IEEE 802.15.6 Based Wireless Body Area Networks

Abstract

In wireless body area networks (WBANs), the routing layer has a unique challenge that needs to be addressed by novel temperature-aware routing mechanisms to minimize the increase in body temperature. However, existing temperatureaware routing studies do not consider the compatibility with the core functions of the MAC layer for routing support, such as a two-hop star topology extension or two-hop scheduled resource allocation. The lack of interaction with the MAC layer can lead to a poor performance or inaccurate performance evaluation. To solve this problem, in this paper, we outline the key functions for routing support defined in the IEEE 802.15.6 and design the new upper-layer components required for temperature-aware routing. Subsequently, we implement a simple temperature-aware routing protocol to compare the performance with previous studies. The simulation results prove that our approach can derive a practical routing performance in terms of delay, packet delivery ratio, and power consumption, among other factors.