Energy efficient and reliable communication in IEEE 802 15.6 IR UWB WBAN

This paper presents an exhaustive study on the use of one-relay and two-relay cooperative communication schemes and 2-hop communication scheme for improving the energy efficiency and reliability of ultra-wideband based wireless body area networks (UWB WBANs). Various investigations have been performed to study the impact of the parameters like packet size, hop distance, transmit power and channel error rate on the energy efficiency and reliability. An optimal packet size is obtained for the maximization of energy efficiency for both on-body communication and in-body communication. The analytical and simulation results show enhanced reliability with cooperative communication than direct communication and 2-hop communication, for all values of source to destination distances. The results also depict a threshold behaviour for energy efficiency which separates the hoplength for direct transmission from the hoplength where cooperation and 2-hop communication will be useful. The simulation results reveal that if the channel conditions are poor, when the source to destination distance is larger than the threshold value, 2-hop communication gives higher energy efficiency compared with direct and cooperative communications