An Energy Efficient Cluster-Head Formation and Medium Access Technique in Multi-Hop WBAN

In the present era, Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) has emerged as one of the most desired healthcare technologies. Along with healthcare, its application area includes sports, entertainment, battlefield etc. Any time to time posture and position changes of human beings result in changes in node connectivity of the WBAN associated with them. To cope with this situation, the data cluster heads should be changed and adjusted as per the distance between the various sensor nodes. Also, the cluster head must be accessible to all neighbouring nodes to ensure that each node transfers its data packet to the cluster head. This ultimately increases the reliability of WBAN. Energy efficiency is another most important requirement in WBAN to increase the network lifetime. Selection of cluster head plays a crucial role in improving energy efficiency. In this paper, an energy efficient, integrated cluster formation and cluster head selection method where cluster head can be selected dynamically to achieve high fault tolerance is presented. This work has relevance to multi-hop WBAN environment as cluster-based topology involves minimum two hop communication between sensor node and the coordinator node. The proposed technique involves selection by the cluster head the frames having least interference. Achieving energy efficiency without any data discrimination, considering probabilistic inter-cluster interference as one of the constraints in cluster creation for avoiding collision, elimination of hard clusters, and incorporation of dynamic channel allocation scheme in CH selection for efficient utilization of the bandwidth and reduction in adverse effects of clustering are the main beneficial features of the technique.