Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
1.5 Scope of the topic
This topic focuses on several important areas regarding WBAN and IR-UWB
communication that are described below;
(1) Hardware platform development for IR-UWB based WBAN communication
This topic thoroughly discusses several hardware design techniques that can be
used in the development of IR-UWB based hardware platforms that include IR-
UWB transceiver design techniques and full sensor node implementations. This
book also presents the development of a unique sensor node design that uses an IR-
UWB transmitter for data transmission and a 433 MHz ISM band receiver for data
reception. Furthermore, development of a dual band coordinator node that facili-
tates the data communication of multiple sensor nodes is presented. Various
properties of IR-UWB pulses such as rise time, pulse width and PRF, are analyzed
in detail in order to develop an IR-UWB transmitter with optimum performance.
(2) MAC protocols for IR-UWB based WBANs
MAC protocol plays a key role in facilitating reliable and power efficient
communication between multiple sensor nodes. This topic discusses various MAC
protocols that are available in the literature paying attention to their critical
aspects, such as power efficiency, throughput capability and data transmission
delay. This topic also presents a UWB MAC protocol that provides efficient data
transmission in WBANs applications. This MAC protocol uses a beacon enabled
super frame structure in order to schedule the data transmissions of sensor nodes;
hence reduces the multiple access interference in the network. Furthermore, it is
designed to dynamically control the Pulses Per Bit (PPB) value used for UWB data
communication using control messages sent via the narrow band feedback path.
This leads to dynamic BER and power control at the sensor nodes, which helps to
improve the reliability of communication and power efficiency of sensor nodes
under dynamic channel conditions. A simulation platform developed using the
Opnet modeler [
41
], which is a commercially available network simulation soft-
ware, is presented. Important properties of the UWB communication system, such
as physical layer pulse based UWB transmission, multipath and fading properties
of IR-UWB and WBAN channel models, and multiple user interference, are
incorporated into this simulation platform. Main intention of these simulation-
based studies is to investigate the feasibility of the UWB communication method
before going into hardware implementation. It also provides a mean of analyzing
the performance of the UWB MAC protocol in an environment where a large
number of sensor nodes are involved in communication.
(3) Implementation and experimental evaluation of a UWB MAC protocol in
hardware platforms
