System Implementation and Evaluation of an Energy Efficient UWB-Based MAC Protocol for Wireless Body Area Networks

Abstract

A Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) should operate with minimum power consumption while providing reliable data transmission. This chapter describes system implementation of a Medium Access control (MAC) protocol for WBAN applications. A WBAN is implemented using four UWB WBAN sensor nodes and a coordinator node in order to evaluate the real-time performance of the MAC protocol. A detailed description of the firmware implementation of the MAC protocol is given including code examples of a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) based firmware implementation. Performance parameters of the network are evaluated for various communication scenarios. This chapter also presents the power consumption measurements of UWB WBAN sensor nodes during real-time network operation. These power measurements represent the detailed power efficiency of both hardware design and MAC protocol design.