: Engr Aqeel ur Rehman : Wireless Networks : Spring 2012 : Ali Yousuf Khan : Iqbal Uddin Khan
an option, mostly due to its high energy consumption. If used, it is mainly for connecting the BS to the rest of the infrastructure. The same applies for cellular technologies [3]. How ever there are some drawbacks in wireless communication: Energy consumption: There are great efforts have been made to reduce the energy necessities in wireless communication but still it is the most power consuming component in any node. Greater capacity currently implies bigger sized batteries and size in BANs is an extremely critical. Data Rates: Blue-tooth in its last version 4.0 supports link rates of 1 to 3 Mbps. The low power version has link rate of 1 Mbps. These are the over-the-air rates, while for the application layer it amounts to 721.2 kbps for Basic Rate 2.1 Mbps for Enhanced Data Rate . 802.15.4 is capable of throughputs of 250 kbps over the air. As the 802.15.6 draft defines 10 Mbps using UWB. Propagation: Signal barriers, multi-path effects and the presence of dielectrics can affect the quality of the signal received. In BANs the link path is short, however the human body can shadow the signal , water (50% to 65% of the human body) absorbs 2.4 GHz waves, which is 802.15.4 and Blue-tooths working frequency and reflections in the working environment are also present. Interference: Most of these standards work within the 2.4 GHz frequency, have to face the problems of coexistence. For example , Blue-tooth, is able to cope with 802.11 by hopping to different channels, but there is a limit to this capability. Security: Wireless is a shared medium . As such, it is easier to eavesdrop on wireless communications. Health Issues: International organizations provide guidelines for safe usage of devices that use radio frequencies, where the World Health Organization's (WHO) International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) is a reference. This leads us to believe that current radio frequency equipment is working within safe limits, however there are still studies and concerns about the usage of wireless devices near the human body, where the recent report from International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) is one . The advantages of wireless are many and easily noted, one of all is that easily replaceable, as it ill be difficult in wired connection. When talking about wearable or out side body sensors, there is a possibility of having a wired connection or a network of sensors connected with wires, but there are three main disadvantages which are mentioned on next page.
Node Placement: Wired nodes are placed where it is already been noted, so in that cases placement of nodes in future should be very care full and not easy to change the location. Full Mesh: To provide fully connected node network in wired connection is not possible as number of nodes increases, or once deployed it will be not easy to add new nodes. Lack of Standards: As there in no specific standard available for wired connectivity in such scenarios, although some wired connection's standards are available but not yet deployed on BAN.
Some researchers are also working on a Smart wearable fabric, to reduce mechanics of wired or wireless nodes' replacements and addition can be seen at Sensing Fabrics for Monitoring Physiological and Bio-mechanical Variables: E-textile solutions [4].
The 802.15.6
It is the standard for short range wireless communication, specially with in or around human body. It uses ISM bands and to support QoS, it is extremely low powered and has data rates up to 10 Mbps. The purpose of this standard is to provide standard to a very low power, short ranged and within or around human body communication. As the current Personal Area network - 802.15, dose not meet the requirement or standard of medical regulations. The application targeted in WBAN 802.15.6 are than divided in to two main categories, one is Medical an second one is Non Medical. This division can be seen in figure below.
Network Topology
All nodes and Hubs are organized in the same manner as illustrated in figure below, all nodes in one star should only communicate to is hub H1 or H2, if any further communication required among multiple stars a relay capable node is required [5].
Description of 802.15.6
First we discuss Physical Specifications. It consists of reference model described in IEEE 802.15.6.
All nodes and hubs are divided into to a PHY (Physical) Layer and MAC ( Media Accesses Control ), the PHY layer and MAC layer of a node or a hub only uses one operating channel at a time. Message security and encryption are done at the MAC layer, and key generation take place outside the MAC layer at management entity part. Reference model is shown in figure below. PHY layer Description As described in IEEE's 802.15.6 standard, PHY supports three variants a) Narrow band (NB), Ultra wide Band (UWB) and Human body Communication (HBC). Narrow Band: It is responsible for activation and deactivation of radio system clear channel assessment of current channel and data transmission and receiving. The description of NB frame is on next page.
The frame is known as Physical Protocol Data Unit (PPDU). It consists of Physical Layer Convergence Procedure (PLCP) preamble used for synchronization, PLCP header used for necessary information carrying for decoding and last is PHY Data Service UNIT (PDSU) containing MAC header, MAC frame body and Frame Check Sequence (FCS). Differential Binary Phase-shift Keying (DBPSK), Differential Quadrature Phase-shift Keying (DQPSK), and Differential 8-Phase-shift Keying (D8PSK) modulation techniques are used in PHY NB. Ultra Wide Band: It operates in two bands one is Low band other is High band. Each of these bands are divided into channels. Low band is consists of three channels ( 1 3 ), where channel 2 is mandatory with the center frequency of 3993.6 MHz. In high band there are eight channels ( 4 11 ), where channel 7 is considered as a mandatory channel with center frequency of 7987.2 MHz. Each channel have bandwidth of 499.2 MHz. Typically UWB device must have at least support of one mandatory channel. Below is the frame of UWB.
A UWB PPDU consists of a Synchronization Header (SHR), PHY Header (PHR) and Physical Service Data Unit (PSDU). The SHR is consists of a preamble and a Start Frame Delimiter (SFD). The PHR delivers information about the data rate of the PSDU, the data rates for UWB ranges from 0.5 Mbps up to 10 Mbps with 0.4882 Mbps. Human Body Communication: It also operates in two bands, one centered at 16 MHz and other Centered at 27 MHz with the bandwidth of 4 MHz. Only Europe uses 27 MHz stander while both of are used in all other regions. The PPDU of HBC consists of a preamble, SFD, PHY header and PSDU. The preamble and SFD are fixed data patterns. They are per-generated and sent ahead of the packet header. The preamble sequence is transmitted four times in order to ensure synchronization while the SFD is transmitted only once. per frame. Below is the frame of HBC
MAC layer description MAC is divided into super frame structure, which are transmitted in three modes, a) Beacon mode with super frame boundaries, b) Non beacon mode with super frame boundaries and c) Non beacon mode with out super frame boundaries. Below is a super frame structure.
He super frame is further divided into Exclusive Access Phase 1 (EAP1), Random Access Phase 1 (RAP1),Type I/II phase, Exclusive Access Phase 2 (EAP 2), Random Access Phase 2 (RAP 2), Type I/II phase, and a Contention Access Phase (CAP). EAP, RAP and CAP periods used for the resource allocation in CSMA/CA or slotted Aloha. The EAP1 and EAP2 are used by emergency traffic. The Type I/II phases are used for up link, Down link, Bi link and delay bi link allocation intervals [6].
Security Paradigm The 802.15.6 define three levels of security, each has different parameters described below. Level 0: In this level there is no security measures are available for authentication and data integrity. In other words communication in level zero is un-secured. Level 1: This is the medium level, where data is transmitted in secured authentication but confidentiality and privacy is not available as data is not encrypted. Level 2: It is most secured as compared to above ones, it provides but authentication and encryption. The security level is selected during the association, For uni-cast communication, a pre-shared Master Key is used to establish a Pair wise Temporal (PTK) key for a session. For multi-cast communication, a Group Temporal Key (GTK) is shared with the corresponding group.
A) Intra BAN communication, B) Inter BAN communication and C) Beyond BAN communication. Intra BAN: The term Intra BAN communication, is about 2 meters around human body, in reference to radio frequency. It is further divided in two: a) Communication among body sensors, b) Communication among Body sensors and personal server. Intra BAN Communication Could be Wired, Wireless, Hybrid, Direct connected to Access Point and Clustered. Figure on Next page shows the possibility of Intra BAN communication [7].
Inter BAN: It means communication between Personal servers and Access point, sometimes between Access points and sensors. The communication can be a) Infrastructure based or b) Adhoc based. Beyond BAN: It is intended for use in metropolitan areas. In order to bridge the two networks for inter-BAN and beyond-BAN communications. A gateway device, such as a PDA can be employed to create a wireless link between these two networks.
Below is the Core functional components for body sensor system design [7].
References 1. A.Bhatra, A.Xfaha, An Over view of IEEE 802.15.6, Texas Instrument, BWRC Wireless Sensor Workshop 2011. 2. H.Schaap, Position of Body Area Network, University of Twente, January 2005. 3. P.Brando, Abstracting Information on Body Area Network, University of Cambridge, 2012. 4. M.Pacelli, G.Loriga., N.Taccini, R.Paradiso, Sensing Fabrics for Monitoring Physiological and BiomechanicalVariables: E-textile solutions, Proceedings of the 3rd IEEE-EMBS,MIT, Boston, USA, Sept.4-6, 2006 5. IEEE Standard for Local and metropolitan area networks Part 15.6: Wireless Body Area Networks 6. K.S.Kwak, S. Ullah, N.Ullah, An Overview of IEEE 802.15.6 Standard,20 Feb 2011. 7. Body Area Networks- A Survey, Mobile Networks and Applications, Vol 16 # 2 ,2010.