MTM-MAC: Medical Traffic Management MAC Protocol for Handling Healthcare Applications in WBANs

Abstract

Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs), designed especially for healthcare applications require a strict guarantee of quality of service (QoS), in terms of latency, error rate and reliability. Generally, medical applications have different kinds of data traffic which may be classified into periodic, urgent or on-demand. Each type has its own requirements and constraints. The IEEE 802.15.6 WBAN specific standard, designed especially to handle healthcare applications, proposes different channel access mechanisms and superframe structures but does not specify how to handle the different types of medical traffic. The present paper describes MTM-MAC protocol, a new traffic aware MAC protocol which adapts the IEEE 8021.15.6 and exploit network context-awareness to satisfy the specific requirements of each traffic type. Through simulations, the proposed protocol proved its efficiency in comparison with IEEE 802.15.6 in terms of delay, energy and throughput.