A Priority based Cross Layer Routing Protocol for healthcare applications

Wireless body area networks (WBANs) represent one of the most promising approaches for improving the quality of life, allowing remote patient monitoring and other healthcare applications. Data dissemination and medium access in a WBAN are critical issues that impact the network reliability, the efficiency and the total energy consumed by the network. In this paper, we propose a Priority-based Cross layer Routing Protocol (PCLRP) along with a Priority Cross Layer Medium Access Channel protocol (PCLMAC) for healthcare applications. PCLRP combined with PCLMAC ensures reliable traffic dissemination and customized channel access for intra- and inter-body communications. Simulation results show that the proposed protocol achieves customized quality of services and outperforms state of the art existing protocols in terms of power consumption, packet delivery ratio and delay. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.