Design & implementation of low power MAC protocol for wireless body area network.

Abstract

A wireless body area network (WBAN) is a network consists of wearable wireless computing devices. Advances in low power integrated circuits make it possible to mount miniaturized sensor nodes on the human body to form such a network for collecting one?s physiological data, such as vital sign, movements etc. In a WBAN system, a sensor node should not interfere users? daily activities, and should be battery-powered to work for days or even months for a single charge. This requires the sensor nodes to be in small size and consume low power. In this dissertation, the hardware implementation and the medium access control (MAC) protocol design for WBAN systems are explored.