The Impact of Nodes Embedded with Data Processing Unit on Energy Consumption in a Wireless BAN

everal access modes and access methods, combined with new power management schemes and frame structures are defined in the latest IEEE standard 802.15.6. The configurations and supported four kinds of data rates determine energy efficiency of the whole wireless body area network (WBAN) system. To improve quality of service (QoS) in WBAN, node power efficiency is very critical, especially for medical applications with implanted devices. In this paper, we proposed a method to reduce the node energy consumption meeting with current standard, targeting at a usual case; and developed an analytical model to evaluate the power efficiency. Simulation results show that good power efficiency can be achieved when the transaction transfers in higher data rate. Also, the embedded processing unit saves node energy for most applications, in which the payload is higher than 70 bits per beacon period. When its compression factor is bigger than 2 and its power consumption does not exceed 40% of the transceiver, better energy efficiency always can be guaranteed by processing unit insertion