Dynamic superframe adaptation using group-based media access control for handling traffic heterogeneity in wireless body area networks

Wireless body area network is a promising technology that brings healthcare to a new level of personalization. The applications of wireless body area network are not limited to healthcare monitoring applications but vastly used in entertainment applications. The applications are emerging at a fast pace and attract the attention of researchers. IEEE 802.15.6 provides a communication standard which specifies the physical layer and media access control layer operations for wireless body area networks. A fixed superframe structure is used for handling of heterogeneous traffics of wireless body area networks through pre-defined user priorities. This leads to inefficient use of superframe time duration because of fixed time phases for different types of data traffic. In this article, a novel group-based classification of traffic is introduced to avoid contention and inefficient use of superframe duration. A group-based media access control is developed to adjust the superframe duration according to high priority traffic whereas the rest of the traffic is controlled using node-based buffering. The experimental results showed that the proposed media access control outperformed adaptive beaconing medium access control and priority media access control, in terms of stability period, delay, throughput, transmission loss, and residual energy.