An Adaptive Scheduling Algorithm for the Patient Monitoring System on WBANs

Abstract

The Patient Monitoring System (PMS) is an essential medical system to check the vital signs of patients for 24 hours. However, the wire-line connection makes patients uncomfortable and makes it inconvenient for medical doctors and nurses to manage the system. Recently, Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) has been spotlighted as a promising wireless communication technology for the devices operating on, in or around the human body. Thus, WBAN could be a candidate technology to resolve the connection problem of the PMS. However, existing WBAN technologies, especially the IEEE 802.15.4 and the IEEE 802.15.6, have some limitations to support the PMS in the viewpoint of time sensitivity and energy efficiency. Therefore, this paper proposes an Adaptive Scheduling Algorithm (ASA), which supports a fast retransmission mechanism through adaptive retransmission slot allocation within the superframe. In addition, the ASA piggybacks the synchronization and association control data into existing ACK in order to save wireless resources. Through the performance comparison, the proposing ASA reduces the average latency, enhances energy efficiency, and minimizes the average link occupancy compared to the IEEE 802.15.4 and the IEEE 802.15.6 technologies.