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Postural-based movement routing using Wireless Body Area Network

NyirabahiziAssouma Department of Computer Engineering, Kyung Hee University, Korea {assouma}@khu.ac.kr


Abstract- New technology has led to development of small, miniaturized, low-power sensor nodes that are

being used nowadays in different applications such as sport, military, ubiquitous healthcare, etc. These sensors may be deployed on human body to monitor several vital sign wirelessly (WBANs); this led them to meet severally challenges. A Postural-based movement routing using wireless body area network is needed for these applications to increase the network lifetime and then to be adopted by end-users. Many schemes have been proposed. However, fewer efforts have been putted in dynamic network environment of human body movement. To overcome this limitation, we investigate different routing protocol in dynamic environment and the facts of finding the energy efficient, shortest path and a reliable way to deliver sensitive data considering different postures which could cause the disconnection of the link node and this, within a balanced energy network backbone.
Keywords-component;Wireless body area networks,routing,reliability Energy-efficient.

1. Introduction
Increasing use of wireless network and advances in microelectronics and integrated circuits have enabled the development of small and intelligent sensors which can be attached or implanted into the human body wirelessly. These sensors form a type of network that is called Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN). A Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) consists of miniaturized, low-power sensor nodes in, on, or around a human body to monitor body functions and the surrounding environment. Each intelligent node has enough capability to process and forward information to a base station or a sink for diagnosis and prescription [1]. Lately, Interest in the application of WBAN has grown considerably. It used in many application areas namely sport, military, interactive gaming and ubiquitous healthcare. Its initial applications are expected to appear in healthcare domain [2] where it is taking high interests in improving human healthcare monitoring then offers flexibility and mobility to patients, provide real-time feedback for enabling many patient diagnostics procedures via continuous monitoring of chronic conditions or recovery progress from an illness or surgical procedure, in addition it support early detection of abnormal conditions and prevention of its serious consequences. Typical application scenarios could be monitoring body temperature, heart beats, blood pressure, body positions, location of the person and overall monitoring of a patient in hospital or at a home [3]. BSNs are an important development for ambulant patient monitoring, a key technology to improve support of a growing elderly population [4]. WBAN hold great potential for the near future but even though, they still open research challenges in their development that require considerations in order to implement and deploy such network, among those challenges, they are resource constraint of the sensor node, link or node Heterogeneity, fault tolerance, reliability,robustness, effective routing and network architecture ,then, the variability of the network topology. Furthermore, Network topology governs the logical connectivity between the body sensor nodes in networks; this require consideration since the sensor mounted on human body could change their positions anytime with body movement, and this may affect the development of entire networks stacks [5],Network topology are more variable due to body movement[6] Any small node movement could completely reorganize the network topology [7] Body orientation and movements will affect the signal strength in the receiver side [8]. In such scenarios the quality of the link between the nodes varies with time [9]. Research points out that single hop is not always a viable solution, as channel conditions on the human body can be poor [5].Star topology raise reliability questions as the hub or central node may fail leading to total system failure [10]. In this paper we show that this star topology has

inadequacies especially for WBANs operating in dynamic and time varying environment. The selection of a proper network topology in WBAN is important because it significantly affects the overall System performance and protocol design [1]. In this paper, we are considering the challenge that arises in Wireless body area networks (WBAN) in the presence of movement of human body wearing on-body wireless sensors. Body movement could make change in the networks topology of WBAN by displacing the sensor nodes and this could cause the disconnection of link between nodes, moreover the link dynamism caused by the signal attenuation subject to the distance between the transmitter and the receiver [7][1][2]. Link quality estimation forms a fundamental component of the WBANs communication stack on which most of network layer protocols are based (e.g. routing, localization, self organization techniques, etc.)[4], here we are going to focus on the link quality estimation between the on body sensors, the topology that is adequate to be used to facilitate the transmission of the data in energy efficiency and reliable manner, to find the shortest path routing to deliver the data.

2. Related works
They have been a considerable number of works in Wireless Body Area Network in terms of topology, routing, reliability and energy efficient. However only few of them have investigated on the challenge that exist in variability of network topology and the impact it can cause on the whole stack of the wireless body area networks.
In [5] a schema for the selection of network topology for wireless body area networks has been proposed to identify and classify a set of key parameters that should be considered in topology selection. They show the topology that can be used in different scenarios and the schema is based on reducing those parameters for use in mapping to the characteristic of particular topologies, However they didnt consider when there is topology change in the same scenario. In [11] they investigate the impact of networks architecture on different metric and inspect the impact of the network architecture choice on an effect specific to BSNs line inter user interference. They compare star and multihop architecture to highlight their respective performance. In [12]Body posture based dynamic link power control in wearable sensor network; they explore on body energy management mechanisms in the context of emerging wireless body area networks by focusing specifically on transmission power (TP) assignment for links between body mounted sensors however it doesnt put some consideration on the communication between those sensors in dynamic environment of WBAN.

[13] On-body Packet Routing Algorithms for Body Sensor Networks, this work explore on body packet routing mechanisms in the presence of topological partitioning caused due to ultra-short wireless transmission range and postural body movements and propose a store and forward packet routing algorithm for wireless body area networks with the objective of minimizing the end to end delay by choosing routes on which storage or buffering delay are low. [14]In WBANs, serious problems occur if the device characteristics are not reflected in the routing algorithm. Here they talk about an routing algorithm where 3 modules, the routing table (where the coordinator broadcast message to all the node to build their routing table), the path selector where each node send the message to coordinator by using it, and the fault detector that is being used to detect the faulty node and choose other link to send the data. [15].

3. Proposed approach
The idea is to deliver the sensitive health data according to available shortest path, energy efficient and reliable path, assuming that different body movements or postures could cause the disconnection of some of the logical link that form the wireless body area networks. We propose that once there is variability in network topology, this, will endure the data transmission to follow alternative path according to the available connectivity which may be influenced by the coverage and the current location of the sensor. Here the link in wireless sensor network are time-variable, unstable are they are prone to failure then estimation of link has to be computed regarding the possibility of the network link disconnection. Once the link estimation done, the routing algorithm has to compute the shortest path routing among the available path in view

that, shortest path algorithms are able to respond to topological change and adjust routing decisions when the traffic changes. In addition to that, Mesh network topology construction over the sensor networks will allow the multipath delivery which will provide robustness to adverse environmental conditions and should minimize the energy consumption of the data transmission and increase the reliability of the sensitive health data delivery. We are interested in intra body communications, which defines the communication directly relates to the user with the radio coverage of about 1, 5 to 2 meters, it consists of two categories: (1) the communication among the body sensors, which are deployed strategically on the human body, (2) the communication between the body sensors and the portable personal server, which typically can be a cell phone, PDA or headset.

3.1. System Architecture.


Figure 1 show the general system architecture of Wireless Body Area Network which is consisting of heterogeneous sensors attached on the human body, coordinator and medical center where the current status patients are monitored. These sensors are attached in mesh network manner which is the network topology that is going to be used for the intra-communication between each of the sensors and then between sensors and the coordinator. We have chosen to use the wireless mesh network topology between the sensor nodes on the body, because it allows the multipath routing that will increase the possibility of sensitive health data to reach the destination in reliable and energy efficient way, and this, in case there is one link that meet the problems of disconnection or signal attenuation, the alternative way will be able to deliver the informations. Considering that the induced path loss in a channel near the human body is very high, with the path loss exponent ranging from 2.18 to 3.3 and higher [16][17].

Figure 1.

3.2 Routing in WBAN


There are some differences between WSN and WBAN, In WSN they consider network with homogeneous sensor node, but in WBAN they are heterogeneous and bandwidth is limited and they have a stringent really time requirements. Then, they are a need of specialized protocols for WBANs. Routing protocols in WBANs is not trivial task because of the specific characteristics of the wireless environment (bandwidth limited, heterogeneity of the nodes that forms WBANs and their mobility, network dynamics)

3.3 Shortest path routing algorithm


We are going to discuss about shortest path algorithm that dynamically adapt to the changing network topology. In this algorithm each node attempts to route packets to their destinations over paths of minimum communication cost and updates the distances instantly to adapt to topological and traffic changes. The body area network that we are working on, is subject to frequent and unpredictable changes in topology, given the postural movement which can cause different failure or disconnections. Setting route for body sensor can be performed in central node (coordinator or PDA) that knows the network topology and this require the update of the table each time the network topology changes. The routing decision is assigned to the coordinator. In our algorithm we are going to use cost communication as the metric The coordinator broadcast the message to the sensor nodes to construct their routing table. The routing table includes all informations of the nodes and its neighbors: its ID, current location, residual energy, communication cost distance between itself and neighbor node and this based on the broadcasted message from the coordinator. The node receives the message then it calculates its communication cost according to the direct distance between nodes and residual energy of the node then communication cost of the previous node. After, it will determine the communication cost from the current node to the coordination by aggregating the cost from the previous sensor node and compare them with the current cost. Then the node is going to select the shortest path to deliver the data by considering the path that has the least communication cost.

Algorithm of data delivery in shortest path Input: distance d, number of nodes n Output: shortest path Begin For i=1 to n { Coordinator broadcast message to all nodes If { Message= receive Node construct routing table Then { Compute communication cost= Aggregate cost from the previous node.} Compare cost of other nodes If { C (n) < C (n-1) C (n-1) C (n) Sensor node takes the shortest path with least cost Else { Node= congestion or link failure Coordinator retransmits message or search for alternative path} }} Coordinator broadcast update routing message to nodes. Return the shortest path. }

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