Design and performances evaluation of a hybrid WBAN for medical applications based on the “inter-MAC” layer concept

Abstract

In this paper, we evaluate the energy consumption, throughput, reliability and lifetime for both IEEE 802.15.4/6 MAC protocols. The new idea in this paper is to propose and design a Hybrid Wireless Body Area Network merging both IEEE 802.15.4/6 advantages and managed by our Inter-Mac Layer. Thereafter we present our Protocol Balancing Algorithm to switch between the two MAC layers according to the use in medical applications. The obtained results show that the based Inter-MAC layer Hybrid WBAN design gives the best performances comparing with the simple Mac layer WBAN, especially in terms of throughput, lifetime and reliability.