An analysis on the effects of cluster leadership rotation among nodes using least temperature routing protocol

Abstract

The area of body sensor networks has recently attracted many researchers due to its potential to revolutionize medicine. These sensors are usually implanted inside the human body and communicate among themselves. In the process of receiving, processing or transmitting data, these devices produce heat. The temperature produced by these sensor nodes might damage tissues surrounding the devices if exposed for a prolonged period of time. This paper seeks to improve and evaluate two protocols - Least Temperature Routing and Adaptive Least Temperature Routing protocol - by implementing clustering as well as a leadership rotation algorithm that was also previously proposed. The researchers used Castalia to simulate a basic BAN cluster composed of 6 nodes. To simulate all nodes sending data to one sink node, a throughput application was used. Simulations with leadership rotation showed significantly lower energy consumption compared to a set up with no leadership rotation. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.