A Comprehensive Survey of MAC Protocols for Wireless Body Area Networks

TL;DR

This survey comprehensively reviews MAC protocols for Wireless Body Area Networks, analyzing their design requirements, strengths, weaknesses, and future research directions in energy-efficient biomedical monitoring.

Contribution

It provides an extensive analysis of existing MAC protocols for WBANs, highlighting their advantages and limitations, and identifies open research challenges.

Findings

Identified key design requirements for WBAN MAC protocols.

Analyzed strengths and weaknesses of existing protocols.

Outlined open research issues for future development.

Abstract

In this paper, we present a comprehensive study of Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols developed for Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs). In WBANs, small batteryoperated on-body or implanted biomedical sensor nodes are used to monitor physiological signs such as temperature, blood pressure, ElectroCardioGram (ECG), ElectroEncephaloGraphy (EEG) etc. We discuss design requirements for WBANs with major sources of energy dissipation. Then, we further investigate the existing designed protocols for WBANs with focus on their strengths and weaknesses. Paper ends up with concluding remarks and open research issues for future work.