When Both Transmitting and Receiving Energies Matter: An Application of Network Coding in Wireless Body Area Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces a network coding scheme for wireless body area networks that adapts redundancy based on both transmission and reception energies, significantly reducing energy consumption.

Contribution

It proposes a simple network layer protocol that optimizes energy use by considering both transmitting and receiving energies in star networks.

Findings

Energy reduction ranges from 29% to 87%.

Energy savings increase with more nodes and channel asymmetry.

The scheme is effective even for small networks.

Abstract

A network coding scheme for practical implementations of wireless body area networks is presented, with the objective of providing reliability under low-energy constraints. We propose a simple network layer protocol for star networks, adapting redundancy based on both transmission and reception energies for data and control packets, as well as channel conditions. Our numerical results show that even for small networks, the amount of energy reduction achievable can range from 29% to 87%, as the receiving energy per control packet increases from equal to much larger than the transmitting energy per data packet. The achievable gains increase as a) more nodes are added to the network, and/or b) the channels seen by different sensor nodes become more asymmetric.