Extending optimistic transmission protocol for other movement patterns

Communication between nodes in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) can be interrupted by body movement. With the demand of the use of WSNs in health monitoring systems, it is necessary to investigate and provide a solution to overcome the interference caused by human body parts. The body parts such as the elbow and knee can reflect, absorb or obstruct the radio signal that can disrupt the radio communication. This can increase the energy consumption due to retransmission. In this paper, we have proposed the Enhanced Opportunistic Transmission Protocol that utilizes the kinematic reading to improve the transmission reliability. Our experimental result obtained from sixty participants has shown that the E-OTP can delivery the packet with a higher Packet Delivery Ratio using smaller number of transmissions compared to two other protocols. Our experiments have also shown that the successful transmission can be achieved as long as the node transmits its packet when leg is above the midpoint forward position.