Trade-off Analysis of a MAC Protocol for Wireless e-Emergency
Systems
Oscar Gama1, Paulo Carvalho1, J. A. Afonso2
and P. M. Mendes2
Universidade do Minho, Campus de Gualtar1
Departamento de Informática
P-4710-057 Braga, Portugal
E-mail: {osg,pmc} at di.uminho.pt
Universidade do Minho, Campus de Azurém2
Departamento de Electrónica Industrial
P-4800-058 Guimarães, Portugal
E-mail: {jose.afonso,paulo.mendes} at dei.uminho.pt
Abstract
Wireless sensor networks are envisioned to be deployed in healthcare.
Since emergency and intensive care applications need to assure reliable
and timely data delivery, they have increased demands for quality of
service, including at the MAC layer. Amongst MAC protocols available
for WSNs, the Low Power Real Time (LPRT) presents suitable
characteristics to be deployed in emergency platforms due to its
rational bandwidth allocation, low energy consumption, and bounded
latency. Yet, this protocol may present a significant packet loss ratio
in a wireless channel with bit error ratio. In order to define a MAC
protocol more robust to bit error conditions and able to fulfill the
required quality of service, solutions based on short size beacons and
multiple retransmissions are proposed and tested. The results showed
that such strategies led to meaningful improvements regarding packet
loss ratio, without compromising significantly the energy consumption.
S-Cube 2009, Pisa,
Italy, September 7-9,
2009