Analyzing medium access techniques in wireless body area networks

Abstract

This study presents comparison of Access Techniques used in Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol for Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs). Comparison is performed between Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA), Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA), Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA), Pure ALOHA and Slotted ALOHA (S-ALOHA). Performance metrics used for comparison are Throughput (T), Delay (D) and offered load (G). The main goal for comparison is to show which technique gives highest Throughput and lowest Delay with increase in Load. Energy efficiency is major issue in WBAN that is why there is need to know which technique performs best for energy conservation and also gives minimum delay. Simulations are performed for different scenarios and results are compared for all techniques. We suggest TDMA as best technique to be used in MAC protocol for WBANs due to its high throughput and minimum delay with increase in load. MATLAB is the tool that is used for simulation.