OCDP : A WBAN MAC Protocol for Contention-based Medical and ...

OCDP : A WBAN MAC Protocol for Contention-basedMedical and CE applicationsYoung-Sun Seo, Dae-Young Kim, andJinsung ChoDepartment of Computer EngineeringKyung Hee University, Korea{lamooss,kimdy,chojs}@khu.ac.krBen LeeSchool of Electrical Engineering and ComputerScienceOregon State University, Oregonbenl@eecs.oregonstate.eduABSTRACTWireless body area networks (WBANs) provide communicationservices in the vicinity of the human body. Sincethe WBAN services consists of both medical and consumerelectronics (CE) applications, MAC protocols in the WBANshould be designed considering flexibility and different characteristicsbetween medical and CE applications.In this paper, we propose a WBAN MAC protocol forcontention-based medical and CE applications. To supportbursty CE data and emergency medical data, the proposedWBAN MAC protocol provides a temporary switching methodbetween the Inactive period and the Opportunity periodthrough OCDP (opportunistic contention decision period),and 4-mode opportunity period. Through the extensive simulations,we show the proposed protocol achieves improvedlatency in the WBAN environment compared with the IEEE802.15.4.Categories and Subject DescriptorsC.2.2 [Network Protocols]: MAC protocols.General TermsMAC, Design.Keywordswireless body area networks, hybrid MAC, contention-basedprotocol.1. INTRODUCTIONRecent advances in the healthcare studies that are basedon the state-of-the-art wireless communications and the advancedmedical sensor technologies have provided drivingforces on wireless personal area network (WPAN) studies. Awireless body area network (WBAN), which focuses on medicalapplications and supports consumer electronics (CE) applicationssimultaneously, functions in the vicinity of thePermission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work forpersonal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies arenot made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copiesbear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, torepublish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specificpermission and/or a fee.ICUIMC 2010, Jan 14-15, 2010, Suwon, KoreaCopyright 2010 ACM 978-1-60558-893-3/00/0004 ...$5.00.human body within 3m. The WBAN becomes the nextgeneration of wireless technology for the WPAN [1]. IEEE802.15.6 task group started a standardization for the WBANon November, 2007 [1, 2]. The WBAN allows wireless communicationsfor both medical and CE applications.Typically, medical applications continuously maintain networkconnection of the WBAN and perform communicationperiodically with low data rate. They work monitoring,diagnosis, healing, communications, etc. WBAN requiresbattery-operated medical application to ultra low power consumption,and so demands low duty cycle(e.g.,

Figure 2: The proposed WBAN MAC protocolFigure 1: Superframe structure in IEEE 802.15.42. RELATED WORKSince medical applications are the major issues of theWBAN, existing WBAN MAC protocol (i.e., TDMA andIEEE 802.15.4) have been proposed for medical applications.TDMA was studied in early stage of WBAN researcheswhich consist of the medical sensor devices [5, 6]. When aWBAN consists of various devices with different characteristics(e.g., medical or entertainment characteristics), TDMAmay not be adequate.IEEE 802.15.4 MAC [7] protocol, which is standard forwireless sensor networks, is considered for the WBAN [8,9]. IEEE 802.15.4 MAC uses a superframe structure in abeacon-enabled mode as shown in Figure 1. The superframeduration (SD) as an active period is divided into 16 equalsizedtime slots. A guaranteed time slot (GTS) is allocatedin one or more slots to a device. If lots of GTS slots are allocated,a contention access period (CAP) is decreased. Inaddition, the GTS of IEEE 802.15.4 allows at most 7 devices.In general, IEEE 802.15.4 needs more CAP slots sothat a coordinator may increase a value of SO for the extensionof the CAP duration. By increasing superframe order(SO), however, the GTS slots also increases together. Thus,unnecessary increase of the size of GTS slots exponentially.Since the medical application is the focus of the WBAN,as we identified in Section 1, existing MAC protocols aregenerally used in the WBAN. In WBAN environments, however,CE devices may generate bursty data with event-drivenmethods and connect with the WBAN occasionally. Thus,existing MAC protocols using periodic sleep method for lowpower consumption have the latency due to the periodicsleep. That is, since existing MAC protocols are designed forsensor devices required low power consumption, the WBANMAC protocol should be designed for both medical and CEapplications flexibly.3. PROPOSED WBAN MAC PROTOCOLAs mentioned earlier, since providing the flexibility forvarious applications is the main goal, we propose a hybrid superframestructure MAC protocol for the WBAN. As shownin Figure 2, the proposed WBAN MAC protocol focuses onthe following ideas:First, we exploit the OCDP for the flexible ranges of thelatency. In IEEE 802.15.4, the Inactive period is determinedby beacon order (BO) and SO in a beacon and all devicessleep in the Inactive period. If CAP is insufficient due toincreased temporary traffics, IEEE 802.15.4 expands CAPby increasing SO in a beacon. However, if SO increases,the size of GTS slots also exponentially increases as shownin Figure. 1. To support the WBAN devices required latencyand the sporadic traffics of CE applications flexibly,the OCDP is proposed.Second, we exploit the 4-mode Opportunity period.The 4-mode Opportunity period has 4 kinds of design patternsfor the Opportunity period. WBAN devices requestthe Opportunity period through transmitting the OCM(opportunity contention message) frame in the subperiodof RO (request or opportunity) in the OCDP.The coordinator selectively decides the Opportunity periodamong the 4-mode Opportunity period, and then the coordinatorbroadcasts a OCM ACK (acknowledgement)frame in the AO (acknowledgement of Opportunity)subperiod in the OCDP as shown in Figure 3.3.1 OCDP (Opportunistic Contention DecisionPeriod)Figure 3 depicts the proposed OCDP. Unlike the IEEE802.15.4 MAC protocol, the proposed MAC protocol hasthe OCDP. The coordinator could decide whether the Inactiveperiod or the Opportunity period in the OCDP. Whenbursty data increase temporarily, the latency is inevitable inperiodic sleep mechanisms such as the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC.In the proposed MAC protocol, the OCDP provides the opportunitiesfor switching from the Inactive period to theOpportunity period.Figure 3: The detailed OCDPThe OCDP consists of both the RO subperiod and theAO subperiod. To use those of subperiods, the proposedWBAN MAC protocol provides two request frames namedOCM and OCM ACK. The WBAN devices may request theOpportunity period through transmitting the OCM frame tothe coordinator. On the other hand, the coordinator broadcaststhe OCM ACK frame including the selected Opportunityperiod among the 4-mode Opportunity period.The RO subperiod is designed for transmitting the OCM

Table 1: Table of RONumber of RORO 1RO 2RO 3WBAN devicesMedical devices, sensor, etcCE with slotted CSMA-CACE with CSMA-CA (DCF)(a) Mode ATable 2: Decision Table of Opportunity periodReceived OCM select mode of(RO 1 , RO 2 , RO 3 ) 4-mode Opportunity period0, 0, 0 Inactive period0, 0, 1 Mode C0, 1, 0 Mode B0, 1, 1 Mode D1, 0, 0 Mode A1, 0, 1 Mode D1, 1, 0 Mode B1, 1, 1 Mode D(b) Mode B(b) Mode C(b) Mode DFigure 4: 4-mode Opportunity period.frame. As shown in Figure 3, the RO subperiod has threekinds of subperiods from the RO 1 subperiod to the RO 3subperiod in OCDP. As shown in Table 1, these subperiodsare mapped to the WBAN devices according to its characteristics.As shown in Table 1, since the RO subperiod isdistinguished into 3 groups, each WBAN device issues andtransmits the OCM frame to the coordinator for requestingthe Opportunity period.The AO subperiod is provided for transmitting the OCMACK which is a decision message of switching between theInactive period and the Opportunity period. Table 2 showsthe decision table of the Opportunity period. If a WBANdevice transmits the OCM frame, the coordinator receivesthe OCM frame and sets the RO n (e.g., RO 1 , RO 2 , or RO 3 )to 1. In case that the value of the RO 1 sets to 1, it meansthat either medical devices or sensor devices transmits theOCM frame. When a CE device generates bursty data, theOCM frame transmitted by the CE device. Thus, the valueof RO 2 sets to 1. Since the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC uses theslotted CSMA-CA mechanism for sensor devices with lowpower consumption and low data rate, the data transmitsto the coordinator without RTS (request to send), CTS(clear to send), and NAV(network allocation vector). Forproviding peer to peer communications without relaying tothe coordinator, the proposed MAC protocol provides DCFmechanism to the CE devices optionally. These CE devicesrequest the Opportunity period in the RO 3 subperiod. Acoordinator used in the Table 2 decides the one of opportunityperiod among 4-mode opportunity period through compoundingeach OCM frame of RO n.The proposed OCDP has additional overhead in comparisonwith the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC. Since the medical applicationsgenerally use the Active period, however, they usethe OCDP and the Opportunity period in the emergency situationor the medical device requiring the latency. Both CEapplications and event-driven medical applications (e.g., motiondetection and fall detection for the elderly or disabledpeople) use the Opportunity period for the low latency toresolve bursty data traffic occasionally. Therefore, the coordinatorusually spends energy to wake-up the system in theOCDP.3.2 4-Mode Opportunity PeriodIn OCDP, if there is any WBAN device which wants touse the Opportunity period, they request the Opportunityperiod through transmitting the OCM frame in the subperiodof RO in the OCDP. When all of the subperiods of ROend, the coordinator decides and selects the Opportunityperiod among four kinds of Opportunity period as shown inFigure 4. Since each RO is mapped to WBAN device characteristics,as shown in Table 1, the coordinator calculatesand decides the Opportunity period through Table 2.As shown in Figure 3, the Mode A provides the slottedCSMA-CA with periodic sleep alternately for low power consumption.Since Mode A means that the medical device onlyrequests the Opportunity period, the all of CE devices sleepduring Mode A. Mode B provides the slotted CSMA-CAduring the Mode B. Mode C provides only DCF mechanismduring the Mode C. Mode D provides both the slottedCSMA-CA and the DCF mechanism alternately.4. PERFORMANCE EVALUATIONWe first describe our simulation model to compare theperformance of the proposed WBAN MAC protocol with theIEEE 802.15.4. We assume following PHY model as wirelesschannel: ISM band, O-QPSK modulation, 2,000kcpschip rate, and 250kbps data rate [5]. In addition, both theproposed and IEEE 802.15.4 MAC protocols use the superframestructure. In order to satisfy the latency requirementin Section 1, we set BO=4 (245.76ms of superframe) andSO=3 (122.88ms of active period).Next, the traffic model is as follow: There exists medicaldevices of which the sampling rate is 12 channel electrocardiography(ECG) (250Hz), Temperature (2Hz), Oximetry(60Hz), Breathing rate (50Hz), Skin resistance (50Hz), Arterialpressure (120Hz), Respiration rate (20Hz), Cardiacrate (10hz). The period of packet generation are between

Figure 5: Latency comparison (medical devices)300ms and 550ms. They send a packet of 40 bytes periodically[8, 9]. On the other hand, one CE device sends amessage of 2000 bytes sporadically. The message is split intoMAC-layer packets of 127 bytes which is the maximum sizeof IEEE 802.15.4 [5]. The inter-packet interval is 20ms withCBR (constant bit rate) packet generator [10].Figure 5 shows the latency when there exists only medicaldevices. In proposed MAC protocol, the medical devicesrequired the low latency are able to use Mode A. Since theproposed MAC protocol provides the Opportunity period,the proposed MAC protocol increases the latency when thereare more than 35 devices. However, IEEE 802.15.4 usingperiodic sleep increases the latency when there are morethan 20 devices.Figure 6 shows the latency when a CE device is added.The CE device should contend medical devices in CAP inthe Active period. When the CE device generates the burstydata and goes to sleep in the Inactive period, the latency isinevitable. However, the CE device can use the Opportunityperiod (i.e., Mode B) in the proposed MAC protocol,so that the latency can be reduced dramatically. The proposedprotocol can be used flexibly in a variety of WBANapplications as mentioned in Section 1.5. CONCLUSIONIn this paper, we have proposed a WBAN MAC protocolfor WBAN applications using the contention mechanism.Since our proposed protocol has the OCDP and 4 mode Opportunityperiod, it can be used flexibly in various WBANdevices and applications which require low latency. We havevalidated the flexibility through extensive simulations.6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTSThis work was supported by the Korea Science and EngineeringFoundation (KOSEF) grant funded by the Koreagovernment (MEST) (No. R01-2008-000-20029-0) and bythe MKE (Ministry of Knowledge Economy), Korea, underthe ITRC (Information Technology Research Center) supportprogram supervised by the NIPA (National IT IndustryPromotion Agency) (NIPA-2009-(C1090-0902-0002)).Figure 6: Latency comparison (with CE device)7. REFERENCES[1] H. B. Li, R. Kohno. Introduction of SG-BAN in IEEE802.15 with related discussion. Proc. IEEE InternationalConference on Ultra Wideband, pp. 134–139, September2007.[2] IEEE 802.15 WPAN Task Group 6 BAN:http://www.ieee802.org/15/pub/TG6.html.[3] 802.15.6 Call for Applications - Response Summary,IEEE 802.15-08-0407-05-0006.[4] TG6 Technical Requirements Document (TRD), IEEE802.15-08-0664-09-0006.[5] Omeni. O, Wong. A, Burdett. A. J, and Toumazou. C.Energy Efficient Medium Access Protocol for WirelessMedical Body Area Sensor Networks. BiomedicalCircuits and Systems, IEEE Transactions on, vol. 2,Issue. 4, pp. 251–259, December 2008.[6] C. Min, P. Chenglin, G. Xingming, L. Jianmei. A NovelMAC Protocol for Wireless Physiological InformationSensor Network. Medical Devices and Biosensors, 2007.4th IEEE/EMBS International Summer School andSymposium on, pp. 79–81, August 2007.[7] IEEE 802.15.4 Standard-2003, “Part 15.4: WirelessMedium Access Control(MAC) and PhysicalLayer(PHY) Specifications for Low-Rate WirelessPersonal Area Networks(LR-WPANs),” 2003[8] Haifeng. C, Wanqing. W, Jungtae. L. A WBAN-basedReal-time Electroencephalogram Monitoring System:Design and Implementation. Journal of Medical Systems,March 2009.[9] G. Oscar, C. Paulo, Afonso, J. A, Mendes. P. M.Quality of Service Support in Wireless Sensor Networksfor Emergency Healthcare Services. Engineering inMedicine and Biology Society, 2008. 30th AnnualInternational Conference of the IEEE, pp. 1296–1299,August 2008.[10] Romdhani. L, Qiang. Ni, Turletti. T. Adaptive EDCF:enhanced service differentiation for IEEE 802.11.Wireless Communications and Networking, 2003.WCNC 2003., vol. 2, pp. 1373–1378, March 2003.