mobTHE (Mobile Temperature Heterogeneity Energy) Aware Routing Protocol for WBAN IoT Health Application

Abstract

In this paper, we are proposing and validating “mobTHE” protocol that is designed to fill the gap in handling seamless mobile communication for on-body nodes. Therefore, “mobTHE” protocol tackles the dis-connectivity problem resulted from the sensor nodes' mobility while keeping an eye on the network's sustainability in terms of maximum packet throughput, prolonged node lifetime, and low temperature. To provide such a balanced trade-off, we utilize two Coordinator Nodes (CNs), namely, CN1 and CN2. Both of these CNs are working as Serving CN (SCN) to its closest nodes and as Neighbour CN (NCN) to the sensor nodes located far from these CNs, which enable collecting data from different sensor nodes continuously. The challenge here is the synchronization between the two CNs in such a way to optimize network resources via minimizing packet transmission duplication and packet drop rate, which is the main contribution of this paper. We present a novel Handover (HO) mechanism during the sensor node mobility and changing between the two CNs. That HO mechanism is capable of minimizing the redundancy of packets and leading to minimization in the packet drop rate. Considering the worst-case scenario where the sensor node is out of the two CNs range, we exploit two-hops data transmission. Parent Node (PN) is selected “on demand” to carry only the data of the moving node which moves away from both CNs rather than carrying the data of all sensor nodes which conserves the energy of the PN nodes as well as the moving node. The simulation analysis depicted that “mobTHE” protocol outperforms the conventional “THE” and “iM-SIMPLE” protocols in terms of temperature control, WBAN lifetime, throughput, and overall residual energy.

Keywords

• Routing protocols
• wireless body area networks (WBANs)
• temperature control
• energy savings
• Internet of Things (IoT)
• medical application