Medium Access Control Protocols for Brain Computer Interface Applications

Abstract

Noteworthy advancements have occurred in the field of brain computer interfaces (BCI) in the last decade. The transmission of the collected signals to the corresponding organ through a wireless link is still in a nascent stage. This paper investigates the feasibility of having multiple UHF-RFID transmitters inside the skull which communicate to the receiver outside. The purpose of this paper is to design a wireless communication channel and enhance the communication using a MAC protocol. The existing MAC protocols were analyzed to be used in a BCI application. Though the combination of existing protocols seems like a possibility to use in a BCI system, the complexity of such a protocol is high. This drawback is overcome by proposing a novel MAC protocol. The performance of the proposed MAC algorithm is related with the widely used Q algorithm for anti-collision in the RFID tags. Parameters like delay and collisions are analyzed in detail which are essential to build a consistent, energy efficient, and a low power BCI system.