Fig 3 - uploaded by Thierry Val
Content may be subject to copyright.
Source publication
In the recent few years, Wireless Body Area networks (WBANs) showed what can be done remotely to greatly improve healthcare systems and facilitate the life to elderly. One of the recent ehealth projects is CANet which aims at embedding a WBAN into a cane to monitor elderly/patients. Our main goal in this paper is to evaluate the performances of the...
Context in source publication
Context 1
... differentiation was not officially considered by the major technologies used for WPANs (wireless personal area networks) as IEEE 802.15.4 std [6] and BLE [17], until IEEE 802.15.6 was defined. Since this standard was specifically designed to give a solution to service differentiation, we aim in our work to study the feasibility of using the native priority system of IEEE 802.15.6 within CANet project. With the aim of supplying a personalized standard provid- ing a great use flexibility of WBANs in the field of ehealth, the latest version of IEEE 802.15.6 appeared in 2012. Network topologies supported by IEEE 802.15.6 are one-hop and two- hop star topologies. In the most common case (single hop), an IEEE 802.15.6-based WBAN is composed, as illustrated in figure 2, of one and only one coordinator (or hub) and a number of connected nodes, which varies from 0 to 64 nodes. The two-hop star topology is typically used to increase the range of the network, if needed, and ensures thus a better QoS. This standard operates on the first two layers of the OSI model: PHY and MAC. It proposes a unique MAC layer which can be used for one of the three following PHY layers: Human Body Communications (HBC), Narrowband (NB) PHY and Ultra wideband (UWB) PHY. The differences between these layers reside essentially in the defined data rates and the considered frequency bands as shown in table I. Each PHY layer is also characterised by the contention access mechanism, according to the standard: • For HBC PHY : the slotted aloha is used; • For NB PHY : the CSMA/CA access mechanism is adopted; • For UWB : Either slotted aloha or CSMA can be used [3]; To allow various network nodes to access efficiently to the medium, three modes were defined by the standard: beacon mode with superframes, non-beacon mode with superframes and non-beacon mode without superframes. In each of these access modes, a different superframe structure has been defined to better serve the various requirements of each traffic type that may exist within the targeted application. The choice of the mode depends on the nature of sensors and their traffic. When the IEEE 802.15.6 is used for a vital ehealth application such as CANet, the time base definition and the traffic differentiation through various periods of appropriate properties for each type of traffic is paramount. In such applications, different mixed frames (for emergency or regular traffic, etc.) are sent frequently. The beacon mode with beacon periods would be thus the most adequate choice since it defines high-flexible superframe periods presented in the figure 3. That’s why we’ll opt for this mode in our CANet study case. The IEEE 802.15.6 superframe, in the beacon mode with beacon periods, consists of n slots (such as 1 n 255 medium access slots) which we allocate to the various superframe parts. EAP phases (Emergency Access Phases) are destined exclusively to high priority traffic and Random Access phases (RAP) can be used for both urgent and regular traffics. MAP (Managed Access phase) is proposed essentially for request-based traffic and CAP (Contention Access phase) is defined only for regular traffic. But why to define two EAP, RAP and MAP periods in a same superframe ? In the case of coexistence, in the same network, between heterogeneous sensors for medical surveillance and others for purposes of entertainment, fixing RAP1 for medical traffic and RAP2 for entertainment traffic with RAP1-duration > RAP2-duration, allows the medical traffic to be more likely to access the channel during RAP phases. It is also useful to precise that only the RAP1 period is mandatory in this mode, all other superframe periods can be of zero length. The table II above shows the main characteristics of the differents parts of IEEE 802.15.6 superframe. To meet the emerging needs in the e-health field, optimiz- ing the existing medium access algorithms is henceforward a priority. For that purpose, an effective traffic management is imperative. This requires among other things the development of dynamic differentiation strategies during data collection (in real time as in delayed mode) as intelligently and precisely as possible. It’s in this context that the IEEE 802.15.6 TG introduced the notion of priority as detailed in table III. The standard did not set clearly the quantitative details for each traffic of a particular priority. Only delays were defined for priorities 3 and 4. For priority 4 (which targets voice), by way of example, the delay must be less than 10 ms [5]. Within the contention access periods such as EAP, RAP and CAP, the respect for the priorities given by the IEEE 802.15.6 is guaranteed through the considered access mechanism. In our case study, the assigned priorities to the sensors will be managed thanks to the CSMA/CA access mechanism by choosing the backoff value among the intervals [CWmin, CWmax] (contention window) defined by the standard for each priority class as illustrated in the following table (table IV). In the next sections, we define and study an IEEE 802.15.6- based case from the CANet project. III. S TUDY CASE AND ANALYSIS To better examine the feasibility of using IEEE 802.15.6 for CANet, we focused on three sensors from those presented in section II.A, having the most different characteristics. Our objectives ...
Citations
... Through simulation, the authors [33] analyzed the performance of the IEEE 802.15.6 CSMA/CA access method in terms of packets received per node, energy consumption, and latency. In [34], the authors allocated all the superframe as only one access phase period to establish the performance evaluation of the IEEE 802.15.6 CSMA/CA access method. In [35] a simple and accurate analytical model is developed to compute the normalized throughput, energy consumption, and delay of the IEEE 802.15.6 CSMA/CA access method. ...
Wireless body area networks (WBANs) are supposed to be an effective proposition to revolutionize the present and the future of health care services. They provide a proactive diagnosis for many deadly diseases, as well as remote and real-time monitoring. On the other hand, they impose several challenges to the medium access control (MAC) protocols design, regarding the energy-efficiency, quality-of-service, priority, scalability, reliability, and security. The standardization of the IEEE 802.15.6 provides new MAC specifications for WBANs, that take these issues into account. In the case of the narrowband frequency (402 to 405 MHz) dedicated to medical applications, the WBAN employs the carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) access method: the main contention-based access method of the IEEE 802.15.6 MAC protocol that supports the unpredictable data traffic. This access method suffers from the loss of its performance with the increase of the network density. Consequently, evaluating and improving it is important, especially with the sensitivity of the medical data it deals with. In this paper, we evaluate the performance of the IEEE 802.15.6 CSMA/CA access method, through an illustrative case-study, using the statistical model-checking (SMC) toolset UPPAAL-SMC. Then, based on the results of this evaluation regarding the negative impact of the converged contention window (CW) intervals, we propose new ones and a new backoff counter (BC) selection procedure. Relevant metrics we use are energy-efficiency, throughput, and delay. Finally, we validate the performance of our proposition, in comparison to the old one, on the same case-study and toolset. Our access method manages to decrease the number of collisions and to increase the number of packets successfully transmitted.
... However, limited work has been proposed for WBAN IEEE 802.15.6. Researchers have proposed different solutions for medium access apart from IEEE 802.15.6 for WBANs using time division multiple access (TDMA), [14][15][16] carrier sense multiple access/collision avoidance (CSMA/CA), [17][18][19][20][21] and hybrid approaches. [22][23][24][25] In next subsection, we discuss these solutions in detail. ...
... A CPN is a central processing node of a WBAN which plans the resources, that is, radio centrally. Polling services is used in Fourati et al. 18 to analyze the WBAN performance under various data rates. The polling is started when nodes are connected with coordinator using CSMA. ...
... The protocol outperforms under polling access mechanism because of efficient use of wireless channel and interference reduction. An intelligent management scheme is introduced in Fourati et al., 18 which uses contentionbased and contention-free access with game theory. The game theory is a mathematical model used for decision making, in which, each node takes its decision independently without knowing the decision of others. ...
Wireless body area network is a promising technology that brings healthcare to a new level of personalization. The applications of wireless body area network are not limited to healthcare monitoring applications but vastly used in entertainment applications. The applications are emerging at a fast pace and attract the attention of researchers. IEEE 802.15.6 provides a communication standard which specifies the physical layer and media access control layer operations for wireless body area networks. A fixed superframe structure is used for handling of heterogeneous traffics of wireless body area networks through pre-defined user priorities. This leads to inefficient use of superframe time duration because of fixed time phases for different types of data traffic. In this article, a novel group-based classification of traffic is introduced to avoid contention and inefficient use of superframe duration. A group-based media access control is developed to adjust the superframe duration according to high priority traffic whereas the rest of the traffic is controlled using node-based buffering. The experimental results showed that the proposed media access control outperformed adaptive beaconing medium access control and priority media access control, in terms of stability period, delay, throughput, transmission loss, and residual energy.
... To overcome the limitations of IEEE 802.15.4-based WBAN simulation platforms, more realistic WBAN simulation systems have been proposed [13][14][15][16][17][18][19]. In the simulation system, a WBAN consists of heterogeneous nodes with different requirements. ...
... However, the proposed system offers limited communication functions and frameworks, which makes it difficult to evaluate the performance under various WBAN environments. H. Fourati et al. [16] proposed a WBAN system for the CANet e-health project. The CANet (Cane Network) project aims to implement a monitoring system for the elderly that can be used in everyday life. ...
Various simulation studies for wireless body area networks (WBANs) based on the IEEE 802.15.6 standard have recently been carried out. However, most of these studies have applied a simplified model without using any major components specific to IEEE 802.15.6, such as connection-oriented link allocations, inter-WBAN interference mitigation, or a two-hop star topology extension. Thus, such deficiencies can lead to an inaccurate performance analysis. To solve these problems, in this study, we conducted a comprehensive review of the major components of the IEEE 802.15.6 standard and herein present modeling strategies for implementing IEEE 802.15.6 MAC on an NS-3 simulator. In addition, we configured realistic network scenarios for a performance evaluation in terms of throughput, average delay, and power consumption. The simulation results prove that our simulation system provides acceptable levels of performance for various types of medical applications, and can support the latest research topics regarding the dynamic resource allocation, inter-WBAN interference mitigation, and intra-WBAN routing.
... The sixth domain is evaluation and assessment. One of the studies focused on the performance evaluation of the IEEE standard 802.15.6 [76,77]. Another study evaluated the efficiency of wearable health devices to enhance communication among healthcare units [78]. ...
Remotely monitoring a patient’s condition is a serious issue and must be addressed. Remote health monitoring systems (RHMS) in telemedicine refers to resources, strategies, methods and installations that enable doctors or other medical professionals to work remotely to consult, diagnose and treat patients. The goal of RHMS is to provide timely medical services at remote areas through telecommunication technologies. Through major advancements in technology, particularly in wireless networking, cloud computing and data storage, RHMS is becoming a feasible aspect of modern medicine. RHMS for the prioritisation of patients with multiple chronic diseases (MCDs) plays an important role in sustainably providing high-quality healthcare services. Further investigations are required to highlight the limitations of the prioritisation of patients with MCDs over a telemedicine environment. This study introduces a comprehensive and inclusive review on the prioritisation of patients with MCDs in telemedicine applications. Furthermore, it presents the challenges and open issues regarding patient prioritisation in telemedicine. The findings of this study are as follows: (1) The limitations and problems of existing patients’ prioritisation with MCDs are presented and emphasised. (2) Based on the analysis of the academic literature, an accurate solution for remote prioritisation in a large scale of patients with MCDs was not presented. (3) There is an essential need to produce a new multiple-criteria decision-making theory to address the current problems in the prioritisation of patients with MCDs.
... In [42], authors did study end-to-end delay, energy consumption and packets loss rate. [209,111,65]. The purpose of the group is to establish a communication standard optimized for low-power, short-range and wireless communication in the vicinity of, or inside human body to serve a variety of medical and non-medical applications. ...
The rapid advances in sensors and ultra-low power wireless communication has enabled a new generation of wireless sensor networks: Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN).
In WBAN, tiny devices, deployed in/on or around human body, are able to detect and collect the physiological phenomena of the human body (such as: temperature, blood pressure, ECG, SpO2, etc.), and transmit this information to a collector point (i.e Sink) that will process it, take decisions, alert and reply.
WBAN is a recent challenging area. There are several concerns in this area ranging from energy efficient communication to designing delay efficient protocols that support nodes dynamic induced by human body mobility. Links have a very short range and a quality that varies with the wearer’s posture. The transmission power is kept low to improve devices autonomy and to reduce wearers electromagnetic exposition. Consequently, the effect of body absorption, reflections and interference cannot be neglected and it is difficult to maintain a direct link (one-hop) between the Sink and all WBAN nodes. Thus, multi-hop communication represents a viable alternative.
In this work we investigate energy-efficient multi-hop communication protocols in WBAN. We are interested in WBAN where sensors are placed on the body. We focus on two communication primitives: broadcast and converge-cast. We analyze several strategies inspired from the area of DTN and WSN. These investigations open new and challenging research directions to design novel protocols for multi-hop communication including a cross-layer approach.
... The study by [57] evaluated this standard in terms of packet delivery rate, latency and power efficiency at the MAC layer while satisfying the ISO/ IEEE 11073 requirement. Meanwhile, the study by [58] evaluated this standard in the performance of IEEE 802.15.6 when applied on different sensors from the Cane Network eHealth Project. The study by [59] assessed the effectiveness of wearable health-monitoring devices in minimising the loading of primary care patients and enhancing the communications amongst different healthcare parts. ...
Promoting patient care is a priority for all healthcare providers with the overall purpose of realising a high degree of patient satisfaction. A medical centre server is a remote computer that enables hospitals and physicians to analyse data in real time and offer appropriate services to patients. The server can also manage, organise and support professionals in telemedicine. Therefore, a remote medical centre server plays a crucial role in sustainably delivering quality healthcare services in telemedicine. This article presents a comprehensive review of the provision of healthcare services in telemedicine applications, especially in the medical centre server. Moreover, it highlights the open issues and challenges related to providing healthcare services in the medical centre server within telemedicine. Methodological aspects to control and manage the process of healthcare service provision and three distinct and successive phases are presented. The first phase presents the identification process to propose a decision matrix (DM) on the basis of a crossover of ‘multi-healthcare services’ and ‘hospital list’ within intelligent data and service management centre (Tier 4). The second phase discusses the development of a DM for hospital selection on the basis of integrated VIKOR-Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) methods. Finally, the last phase examines the validation process for the proposed framework.
... In the evaluationbased sensor area, [50] presented a performance evaluation of the IEEE 802.15.6 standard in terms of power consumption, latency, packet delivery rate and packet breakdown at the MAC layer while satisfying the ISO/IEEE 11073 requirement. Another study evaluated this standard when applied on various sensors from the Cane Network (CANet) eHealth project [51]. An assessment of the effectiveness of wearable health monitoring devices in reducing primary-care patient load was conducted in [52]. ...
The burden on healthcare services in the world has increased substantially in the past decades. The quality and quantity of care have to increase to meet surging demands, especially among patients with chronic heart diseases. The expansion of information and communication technologies has led to new models for the delivery healthcare services in telemedicine. Therefore, mHealth plays an imperative role in the sustainable delivery of healthcare services in telemedicine. This paper presents a comprehensive review of healthcare service provision. It highlights the open issues and challenges related to the use of the real-time fault-tolerant mHealth system in telemedicine. The methodological aspects of mHealth are examined, and three distinct and successive phases are presented. The first discusses the identification process for establishing a decision matrix based on a crossover of ‘time of arrival of patient at the hospital/multi-services’ and ‘hospitals’ within mHealth. The second phase discusses the development of a decision matrix for hospital selection based on the MAHP method. The third phase discusses the validation of the proposed system.
... Other studies on IEEE 802.15.6 CSMA/CA evaluation considered specific requirements of target healthcare applications such as BANET [21] and CANet [22] projects. These IEEE 802.15.6 performances investigations aim to identify the best IEEE 802.15.6 parameters values which could be more adequate to the specific projects scenarios. ...
... In the other side, we demonstrated in a previous work [22] that, in a homogenous network (in the absence of UP7 traffics), another type of problems occurs. In fact, even with the implementation of the native service differentiation proposed by IEEE 802.15.6 priorities system, the priority levels order is not respected. ...
... In fact, even with the implementation of the native service differentiation proposed by IEEE 802.15.6 priorities system, the priority levels order is not respected. For instance, UP2 traffic was transmitted with a higher QoS than UP5 one and IEEE 802.15.6 CSMA/CA assignment approach of backoff counter bounds has proven its inefficiency and has shown its limits [22] . [14] study prove also that there is a slight difference between UP0 and UP1, between UP2 and UP3, and between UP4 and UP5 traffics QoS. ...
eHealth applications have become essential in everyday life healthcare especially for elderly and sick individuals. To provide efficiency to such applications, many standards emerged for WBANs. However, WBANs standards showed their limits in terms of QoS and priorities differentiation depending on applications need. In this paper, we investigate IEEE 802.15.6 MAC performance efficiency and we define TA-802.15.6, an enhanced IEEE 802.15.6 CSMA/CA channel access mechanism. We aim to differentiate all IEEE 802.15.6 priorities traffics and to improve IEEE 802.15.6 based networks performances. Our main contribution is the enhancement of IEEE 802.15.6 CSMA/CA retransmission and packet drop processes. We also defined a new algorithm for dynamic backoff bounds assignment according to IEEE 802.15.6 priorities and to the network traffic state. We make an analytical evaluation through a new 4D Markov chain and by simulation based on Castalia. Results validate that the enhanced IEEE 802.15.6 CSMA/CA version provides a better service differentiation through accentuating priority differentiation and a better QoS in terms of reliability, throughput and energy consumption.
Download link : http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1570870518300179
... In [5] the authors implemented the IEEE 802.15.6 MAC protocol in Castalia [5] to evaluate its performance. They evaluated the performance of CSMA/CA method according to data packet loss, latency and energy consumption. ...
... In [5] the authors implemented the IEEE 802.15.6 MAC protocol in Castalia [5] to evaluate its performance. They evaluated the performance of CSMA/CA method according to data packet loss, latency and energy consumption. ...
... For instance in [20], the protocol proposed aims to improve WBAN [11]. (b) Consumed energy for different nodes and variable packet rates [5]. Figure 6. ...
... However, this waiting time is negligible compared with the time waiting for the backoff counter to reach 0. 802.15.6 based healthcare systems uses few medical sensors and thus requires specific QoS characteristics, in particular high priorities differentiation and high transmission capacity and efficiency especially for emergency traffic. These specific requirements has not been yet fully addressed in 802.15.6 CSMA/CA as demonstrated in [16], [17] and [18] evaluation studies. In our previous work [19], we proposed a new solution accentuating 802.15.6 priorities differentiation. ...
... 802.15.6 CSMA/CA was aimed at reducing, as far as possible, the effects of this issue through defining specific transmission parameters, such as contention window bounds and data rates, for each 802.15.6 priority. However, other problems appeared, mostly low QoS of packets transmission even for nodes with high priority and insufficient priorities differentiation [16]. ...
IEEE 802.15.6 standard defines several service differentiation mechanisms with the aim of providing good QoS to different Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) based applications including medical, entertainment, military, and security. The purpose of this paper is to improve IEEE 802.15.6 slotted CSMA/CA efficiency, making it more suitable for healthcare applications. To do so, we propose an enhancement to the 802.15.6 backoff assignment function. Then, we compare the native and improved channel access mechanisms in terms of reliability and throughput. Simulation results demonstrate that our proposal allows WBAN-based applications to benefit optimally and get better QoS than 802.15.6 features.
