Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 6
System Implementation and Evaluation
of an Energy Efficient UWB-Based MAC
Protocol for Wireless Body Area
Networks
Abstract A Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) should operate with minimum
power consumption while providing reliable data transmission. This chapter
describes system implementation of a Medium Access control (MAC) protocol for
WBAN applications. A WBAN is implemented using four UWB WBAN sensor
nodes and a coordinator node in order to evaluate the real-time performance of the
MAC protocol. A detailed description of the firmware implementation of the MAC
protocol is given including code examples of a Field Programmable Gate Array
(FPGA) based firmware implementation. Performance parameters of the network
are evaluated for various communication scenarios. This chapter also presents the
power consumption measurements of UWB WBAN sensor nodes during real-time
network operation. These power measurements represent the detailed power
efficiency of both hardware design and MAC protocol design.
Keywords UWB
Power consumption
WBAN packet frame
Dual-band
MAC
Firmware implementation
FPGA
Pulse synchronization
Bit detection
BER
Energy consumption
6.1 Introduction
Design and implementation of an efficient MAC protocol plays a vital role in
reducing power consumption and increasing reliability of data transmission. It is
vital to utilize the unique physical properties of an UWB signal, such as the
possibility to send multiple numbers of pulses to represent a data bit, in order to
improve the system performance [
1
-
3
]. The performance of an UWB communi-
cation link is greatly affected by the effects of body motion [
4
,
5
]. The ability of a
MAC protocol to adjust to such dynamic channel conditions plays a vital role in
providing a reliable communication link.
The dual-band MAC protocol described in
Chap. 3
utilizes the physical layer
properties of UWB signal to form a cross layer MAC design. It accommodates
