Thermal and energy aware routing in wireless body area networks

Unlike many other Internet of Things applications, in addition to the limited power of Internet of Medical Things devices, the safety aspect and reliability are the major concerns while designing wireless body area network routing solutions. In fact, the heat dissipation from Internet of Medical Things devices and changes in body posture cause tissue damage and frequent wireless links breakage, respectively. Hence, designing an efficient routing solution is extremely challenging in wireless body area network. Considering the safety aspects of human body, the power constraint of Internet of Medical Things devices, and topological variations in wireless body area network environment, this article presents a thermal-aware, energy-efficient, and reliable routing protocol named thermal and energy aware routing. In the given perspective, thermal and energy aware routing considers the weighted average of three costs while selecting the routing path: energy consumption, heat dissipation, and link quality (between communicating nodes). The proposed protocol is validated by a comparison with a state-of-the-art wireless body area network routing protocol. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed protocol is efficient in terms of energy consumption, thermal impact, and packet reception rate.