2010 International Conference on Body Sensor Networks

Quality-of-Service in BAN: PER reduction and its trade-offs

Fabien Mass, Julien Penders

Holst Centre / imec
Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Fabien.Masse@imec-nl.nl , Julien.Penders@imec-nl.nl

Abstract In ambulatory conditions, body area network allows the pre-definition of the memory allocated to
(BAN) performances are often impaired due to body managing the quality of service.
obstruction or radio interferences from the surrounding The rest of the paper is organized as follows. First, the
environment. Even in these unfavourable conditions, a different services addressed in this paper are defined, and the
Quality-of-service (QoS) layer shall ensure that some critical proposed QoS layer described. The implementation on a
services are met. The wide variability of BAN applications calls BAN platform is then reported, followed by the definition of
for a flexible QoS layer, which can easily be optimized towards the experimental protocol used for evaluation. Results of the
certain application-specific requirements. In this paper we evaluation are then presented, focusing on the trade-offs
propose a flexible QoS layer for BAN addressing the following
between the different services. The way to use the proposed
services: data consistency (Packet Error Rate PER-), latency,
QoS to meet certain application requirements is described.
node lifetime and memory. The QoS layer is evaluated in
experimental conditions. Its ability to reduce packet loss Finally, current limitations and possible extension of the
(improve data consistency) is demonstrated. The trade-offs proposed approach are discussed.
with other services (latency, energy consumption) are
II. QUALITY-OF-SERVICE IN BAN
discussed. A PER reduction of 90% is reported, at the cost of
an increased latency (350 ms) and energy consumption (7%
increase). PER can be reduced to close to 0% for application in
which the latency is left unconstrained. The impact of the
memory allocated to QoS layer on the performances is
characterized.

Keywords- Body Area Network (BAN), Quality-of-Service

(QoS), Packet Error Rate (PER), Ambulatory monitoring

I. INTRODUCTION
Recent developments [1] in Body Area Network (BAN)
have opened new perspectives for health and lifestyle
monitoring during daily-life activities. The wide spectrum of
applications covered by BAN is associated to an equally
wide set of service requirements in terms of data consistency,
latency, sensor node lifetime and memory. This calls for a
flexible Quality-of-Service (QoS) layer, which can easily be
optimized towards the application-specific requirements. For
instance, the QoS requirements differ depending on the data
analysis methods. For real-time applications, latency is
critical. For off-line diagnosis based on sensor data recorded
in ambulatory settings, data consistency is highly relevant
while latency requirements may be loosened up.
Previous work in Quality-of-Service for BAN has been
mainly focused on extracting network performance
parameters, and adapting QoS policies accordingly [2]. Such
an example includes the measurement of signal strength as
an indicator of radio link quality [3]. In this paper, we
propose a flexible QoS layer ensuring the realization of
particular services defined by the application. Targeted at
low-power, resource-constrained sensor nodes, the proposed
method minimizes the required computing complexity and
Figure 1. A typical body area network configuration for multi-modal
physiological and activity monitoring
A. Services in BAN: definition
Based on considerations from the medical community,
the following set of services is found to be the most relevant
for BAN applications: data consistency, latency, node
lifetime and memory availability.
The data consistency represents the quality of the
(wireless) network traffic, and is measured by the difference
between the amount of sent and received application data. It
is characterized by the Packet Error Rate (PER).
The latency symbolizes the time delay between the
sampling of a data point and its availability for the
application. Important contributors to the overall latency
include: local buffering on the node, wireless transmission
(MAC) and quality-of-service management. In this work we

978-0-7695-4065-8/10 $26.00 2010 IEEE 261

DOI 10.1109/BSN.2010.32
will consider the network latency, i.e. the contribution of the
MAC and QoS layers to the overall latency.
The node lifetime represents the autonomy of the node on
a single battery charge. Node life-time should be maximized
for most cases.
The available memory is defined as the RAM space
available for the application, once memory requirements for
the network stack have been fulfilled.
B. Services in BAN: metrics
To quantify the quality of service, the following metrics
were selected: PER, average energy per packet transmission,
latency and buffer usage.
Assuming that Nreceived,app and Nsent,app respectively
represents the number of received application frame and the
number of application frame sent over the air, the PER is
computed as follows:
N
PER = 1 received , app (1)
N sent , app
The estimation of the average energy per packet
transmission requires the definition of an energy model. Here
we make the assumption of a first-order relationship between
the battery life and the number of radio retransmission.
Sampling, processing processes and transmissions being
periodic, the energy consumption over a large time window
can be considered constant if no packet retransmission is
allowed. When retransmissions happen, they contribute with
an additional dynamic factor to the overall energy
consumption, referred as the energy per packet transmission.
Typically, retransmissions may happen at the MAC and QoS
levels. Let Epacket be the energy required to successfully send
a packet, Etransmission the energy per single packet transmission
(including acknowledgement), RMAC the number of
retransmission performed at the MAC layer level, and RQoS
the number of retransmission performed at QoS layer level.
We define RMAC,max as the maximum number of
retransmission performed by the MAC before it considers
the transmission has failed. Epacket is then given by:
E packet = (RQoS RMAC ,max + RMAC )Etransmission (2)
The value of Etransmission depends on the radio chip-set. For
the case of the Nordic nRF24L01 radio [4], Etransmission is
estimated at 17.7 uJ. This includes: PLL synchronization
(3.2 uJ), packet transmission over air (5.3 uJ @ 2Mbps for a
32-byte MAC payload and 57-bit radio header),
acknowledgement (9.2 uJ). RMAC,max will be set to 2 for our
experiments. RMAC and RQoS are recorded on a particular
sensor node and included in QoS packet header. Epacket can
then be computed off-line.
An application packet is time stamped, whenever it enters
the packet the QoS layer, allowing for the computation of
the network latency as defined in section B1. In case of on-
line processing, this metric is often subjected to stringent
requirements. If not met, stored data would become
worthless and energy could be saved by removing the
packet from the QoS layer.
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The buffer usage not only represents the memory
resources that the QoS layer is currently requiring but also
shows trends of the current network health. For instance, by
looking at the stack size of the Last queue, this metric
could give an instantaneous snapshot over the status of the
radio link. Looking at this metric over a larger time window
could also help minimizing the allocated memory to the
QoS layer.
In an extension of this work, these service metrics could
be computed locally on the node, providing real-time
information on the quality of various services.
C. Proposed QoS layer for BAN
In a condensed BAN-specific OSI model [5], the QoS
layer generally lies between the customized application and
the MAC layer. While the MAC layer handles the data
communication and provides acknowledgment information,
the QoS layer attempts to achieve fast and reliable data
transfers via a smarter and extensive usage of radio re-
transmissions.
The proposed QoS layer consists of a set of linked-lists.
Each linked-list has a different priority level to access the
communication channel, and is associated with certain level
of service requirements. The role of each linked-list is
described below:
Free: Lists the available packets.
Application: Lists packets currently locked by the
application.
RadioTx: Stores packets which are currently in
transmission. Its main purpose is to quickly re-
transmit a packet upon need if the sent packet is not
properly acknowledged by the receiver. Access to
this queue is subject to priority.
First: Stores packets which are unlocked and ready
to be transmitted. Packets from this queue are
granted the highest priority on the RadioTx queue.
Delayed #K: Stores packets which need to be re-
transmitted within a guaranteed latency. Each
Delayed queue is characterized by a minimum and
a maximum delay parameter, relative to the time
when a packet is stored into the First queue. If the
maximum delay has been reached, the packet is then
forwarded to the next queue, Delayed #K+1.
Last: Packets belonging to this list remain stored as
long as they are properly acknowledged by the
receiver, in the limits of the available data memory,
providing that the number of allowed retransmission
is not reached.
The access priority to the communication channel for
each of these lists is granted in accordance with the priority
list dressed in Figure. 2. The QoS layer exchanges QoS
packets between these different lists by interconnecting a
series of double-ended queues (Figure. 2). Each QoS packets
include application data, extended with timing and
retransmission information. The typical data flow for the
successive re-transmissions is depicted in Figure. 2 and
works as follows.
 First, a packet is fetched out from the Free list to the
back of the Application list by the application layer. It
remains in the Application list as long as remaining space
can be used by the application to further store samples or
output of DSP algorithms.
Once released by the application to the First list, it stays
in this list until the MAC grants it the permission to be sent,
i.e, pushed into RadioTX list. To guarantee certain latency,
packets coming from the First list are always granted the
highest access priority. The second priority level is assigned
to the Delayed list in order to also respect a second, less
stringent latency.
Once the packet lies in the RadioTx list, the MAC layer
sends it out to the radio and awaits for the status of the
transmission attempt (Success or Failure). Depending on this
transmission attempt outcome, the resource would be either
released to the Free list or swapped to the Delayed list.
Being in the re-transmission state, either in the Delayed
list or Last list reveals that the radio link has been
interrupted when the packet was sent. As opposed to short-
term re-transmissions often carried out at the MAC or PHY
level, meant to mostly attenuate the effect of radio
interferences, the purpose of the delays induced by the QoS
layer is to cope with channel interruption inherent to the
application. For instance, in ambulatory condition, the radio
link between a sensor node placed around the ankle and the
central chest node may be impaired for few hundreds of
milliseconds while the patients is walking (body swing).
Therefore, to avoid unnecessary re-transmissions yielding to
a major power consumption increase, the re-transmission of
packets belonging to the Delayed list is delayed by up to
several hundreds of milliseconds. Each delayed list is thus
characterized by a lower and upper retransmission delay.
Although possible, as a packet from the Last queue shall be
Application
request a buffer
Free
Application Tx Success
MAC Free packet
RadioTx Application Ready to Tx
Packet ready
First
(1)
Delayed #1
Tx Failure
Delay retransmission
Delayed #N
Last
QoS Packet Application fetch/push
MAC fetch : Radio transmission ready
Transmission succeeded : free packet
QoS Queues
Transmission failed : push packet ( :delay)
()
Figure 2. Retransmission strategy
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cleared out as soon as possible to free up the memory, no
delaying has been envisioned for this specific queue.
III. IMPLEMENTATION AND EVALUATION PROTOCOL
A. Body area network platform
The body area network platform used for implementation
of the proposed QoS layer consists of three types of devices:
a sensor node, a central node and a PC node.
The sensor node is composed of two principal electrical
components selected for their low power characteristics: the
microcontroller unit, Texas instrument MSP430F1611
featuring 10KB of RAM and 48 KB of ROM [6], and the
radio transceiver, Nordic Semiconductor nRF24L01 [4]. A
160 mAh-battery provides largely enough power for the
duration of the experiment. External sensors such as
biopotential sensor for ECG or EMG measurements, or
accelerometer can also be connected to the sensor node
through a general-purpose input/output external connector.
The 20x25mm2 sensor node weights less than 10 grams and
is packaged into a 50x40x10mm2 plastic box. The plastic
box is strapped to the body limbs, ensuring the sensor node
to remain in place throughout the experiment.
The central node records the data during the experiment.
It is an enhanced version of the sensor node which includes a
SD-card slot for long-term storage purposes. Its package
form factor is similar to the sensor note.
The PC node, a sensor node feature with a serial-to-USB
FTDI chip, is constantly connected to the computer to track
the different phases of the experiment. Each time the healthy
subject is asked to switch tasks, a software event is sent to
the network to synchronize the incoming data with the
protocol timesheet.
(N)
(0) (0)
Access priority to RadioTx queue
Original
Delayed #1
Delayed #N
Multi
B. MAC Layer Table 2 has been envisioned to cover most of the motion
A star topology is assumed for the network. The MAC is patterns an individual is likely to experience in ambulatory
based on a TDMA-based contention-free protocol. It conditions.
provides enough bandwidth to accommodate the multi-
TABLE II. TASK LIST
modal sensor network. The time synchronization between
nodes is ensured by a periodic beacon transmission from the Task Duration Comments
base station also called central node if located on patients Rest 2 min Treadmill speed : 3 kph
body. The current MAC implementation slices an inter- Walk 5 min Treadmill speed : 5 kph
Rest 2 min Treadmill speed : 3 kph
beacon period into fixed-length timeslots. Besides timeslots
Jog 5 min Treadmill speed : 8 kph
required for listening to beacons, contention-free bandwidth Rest 2 min Treadmill speed : 3 kph
is allocated to a specific node by assigning transmission Run 5 min Treadmill speed : 11 kph
timeslots to this particular node only. The node-specific Rest 2 min Treadmill speed : 3 kph
bandwidth allocation is carried out offline. The timeslot Cycle 5 min Average speed : 80 rpm
length is 1ms and the maximum reported throughput is 400 Rest 2 min Stand still
kbps. An auto-retransmission feature has been added to the
MAC for the purpose of this study. As opposed to the A typical body area network configuration for multi-
proposed QoS layer which can delay packets up to several modal physiological and activity monitoring is considered
seconds, the delay between two re-transmitted packets is 250 for the experiment. It consists of 9 body-worn nodes, each of
us and the maximum number of re-transmission is set to 2. them sampling three acceleration channels at 40 Hz and an
The packet acknowledgement status is also provided. optional EMG channel at 500 Hz. To allow for detailed
analysis of network performances, the sample data payload is
C. Firmware configuration replaced by network-related information such as the number
For this experiment, the QoS parameters are summarized of re-transmission, the buffer stack sizes, or the transmission
in Table 1. To obtain the best possible performances, the and reception time.
QoS stack has been enlarged up to the limit of the RAM
memory and no constraints were set on the latency and the TABLE III. NODE POSITIONS AND MODALITIES
number of retransmission. The bandwidth, i.e. the MAC ID Modality Position
transmission window, was allocated to each node based on 1 Acceleration Right wrist
the type(s) of modalities that the sensor node is required to 2 Acceleration Left wrist
sample. 3 Acceleration Right biceps
4 Acceleration Left biceps
TABLE I. QOS PARAMETERS 5 Acceleration +ECG+ Chest
Respiration (Central Node)
Parameter Value 6 Acceleration+EMG Left leg
7 Acceleration+EMG Right leg
QoS stack size 210 packets (210*38 byte)s=7.98KB 8 Acceleration+EMG Right ankle
Number of delayed queues : 1 9 Acceleration+EMG Left ankle
Latency Queue #1: (min/max) 300 ms/800ms
Last queue : no constraint The position and the recorded modalities of the nodes
Number of
retransmission
No constraints are listed in Table 3. Acting as a central node, network
Bandwidth performances from node #5 will therefore not be further
Only based on modality requirements assessed.
allocation

Both the MAC layer and the QoS layer were
implemented in C and compiled using the IAR toolchain for
MSP430. The number of Delayed queue is limited to one
and its corresponding delay parameters are respectively
300ms (2 beacons) for the lower boundary and 800 ms (8
beacons) for the upper boundary. Excluding the buffers, the
entire network stack, including the radio driver, the MAC
and QoS layer, fits in 2.1 KB of RAM and 13.8 KB of
program memory. 100 bytes of RAM and 3.36 KB of
program memory are dedicated to the only QoS layer.
D. Evaluation protocol
The performances of the proposed QoS layer are
evaluated following an experiment protocol mimicking
daily-life activities. A population of healthy individuals,
equipped with a body area network, were asked to perform a
set of ambulatory tasks at the gym. The task list presented in
IV. RESULTS
The proposed QoS layer is evaluated using the protocol
defined in previous section. Four healthy volunteers, aged
from 23 to 32, have been enrolled in the study. Performances
of the QoS are analyzed off-line based on the network related
data recorded during the experiment. First, the ability of the
QoS layer to reduce packet loss (improve data consistency)
is reported. This comes to a certain cost, and the trade-offs
with other services are then discussed. The impact of the
memory available for QoS management on the performances
is also characterized.
A. QoS achieves significant reduction in PER
To quantify the effect of the proposed QoS layer on the
PER, the origin of each transmitted packet that is the last
queue type before transmission, is recorded. Using this
information, it is possible to estimate how many packets

264
have been transmitted from each level (list) of the QoS layer. to a PER reduction (~90%) while maintaining a reasonable
The PER can then be estimated for the cases where: no energy consumption overhead (max : +50%, average : +7%).
retransmission is performed (First), the first retransmission This adds a latency of 800 ms maximum (see Table I), and
list is enabled (Delayed #1), and the two retransmission lists equals to 350 ms in average. The third case (Last) indicates
are enabled (Last). that a further reduction in PER can only be achieved to the
Figure 3 illustrates the reduction in PER depending as the expense of a steeper augmentation in energy consumption
QoS lists are successively enabled. The data from all sensor (max : +83%, average : +9.15%), and an higher latency
nodes and from all subjects are included in the analysis. The (max: 1545 ms, average: 543 ms).
lower and upper-end of the box represents respectively the
low and upper quartiles of the considered data sets. The in-
box red line corresponds to the median value. The whiskers
correspond to the outliers. A sample is considered as an
outlier, if it does not fall into the [q1-w(q3-q1) ; q3+w(q3-
q1)] interval where w represents the whisker length.
Figure 3 shows that enabling the Delayed #1 queue
already reduces the PER by one order of magnitude.
Enabling the last queue then leads to PER very close to 0%.
The drastic decrease of the corresponding box areas also
shows that the QoS layer considerably reduces the variance
of the PER. This translates in increased reliability over the
data consistency service.

Figure 4. The cost of PER reduction on other services: AEPP and latency

C. Allocated memory size versus PER and energy

Figure 3. Reduction in PER as the QoS lists are successively enabled.
First: no retransmissions; Delayed: Delayed list #1 enabled; Last: All lists
enabled.
In previous results, the memory of the sensor node has been
essentially allocated to the QoS layer. Although this is
possible for data streaming applications, this may become
very limiting if some local processing needs to be performed
on the node [7][8]. Reducing the memory allocated to QoS
layer reduces the number of packets that can be stored on the
different QoS lists for retransmission. This then has an
impact on the PER and on the energy consumption. The
maximum latency is not affected by such a reduction in
memory as each QoS list is associated with its own latency
requirements. The average latency, however, could differ.
Memory size versus PER and AEPP
6 19.8

B. Reducing PER costs in energy and latency PER

AEPP

The reduction in PER achieved through the QoS layer

has an impact on the energy consumption and the latency. To
quantify this impact, the AEPP and latency are calculated for
4 19.6
the three cases above: First, Delayed and Last. AEPP is
estimated using the energy model introduced in section III-
AEPP (uJ)
PER (%)

A. The average latency is computed for the packets

originating from the enabled lists.
Figure 4 represents the evolution of the average energy 2 19.4

per packet and the latency as the QoS lists are successively
enabled. Data from all sensor nodes and from all subjects are
included.
The cross-analysis of the PER and AEPP box plots
(Figure 3 and Figure 4) emphasizes the energy overhead cost 0
6 8 10 12 14 16 18
19.2
20

per transmission and the necessary increase in latency, Size of the QoS memory pool (number of QoS packet)

required to achieve PER reduction. It shows that by re- Figure 5. Memory versus PER and energy
transmitting a packet once, i.e. enabling the Delayed #1
queue, the retransmission protocol significantly contributes

265
 Figure 5 illustrates the cost in terms of PER and the gain
in terms of energy as QoS memory allocation reduces.
Memory allocation is quantified as the number of QoS
packets allocated in the memory pool. The slow decrease in
PER as memory increases suggests that a high data
consistency can only be obtained by significantly enlarging
the memory pool. The reason is that in ambulatory
monitoring, a sensor node could be obstructed from the
receiver for few seconds which could only be coped with by
using large memory buffers.
Consequently, there is no guarantee that a PER of 0% can
be achieved, even if all QoS lists are enabled. This is due to
limited memory availability: the more memory allocated to
the QoS layer, the higher the PER reduction. But Figure 5
suggests that achieving a PER of strictly 0% would require
infinite memory.
V. DISCUSSION
In previous section we have shown how the proposed
QoS layer significantly reduces PER, and evaluated the cost
in energy and latency. The validation protocol presented in
this paper has been designed to mimic daily-life activities. It
does not account, however, for all possible situations in
ambulatory conditions. Furthermore, sport clothes are
generally lighter than casual clothes which may create
additional obstruction to the radio signal. In addition, data
collection was carried out at the gym during where Bluetooth
or Wifi interferences are less important than in other
environments.
A limitation of the proposed QoS layer is that it can only
cope with sporadic packet losses. If the radio signal is
blocked for more than few tens of seconds, depending on the
allocated memory, packet loss would be reported. A solution
combining this enhanced network stack with an on-board
storage could cope with such long burst of scrambled radio
link.
A possible extension of this study could be the adaptation
of certain network parameters on the flight, based on real-
time evaluation of services. This would bring additional
flexibility and enable to target several services at the same
time. To illustrate this approach, let us consider the case of a
bad radio link between a wireless sensor node and a central
node. For such a case, the QoS layer presented in this paper
allows the reduction in PER at the cost of an increased
latency. This increased latency is due to packets originating
from the Last QoS list. To decrease the latency while
maintaining a low PER, it is possible to extend the
bandwidth (number of time slots in the TDMA scheduler)
allocated to this specific sensor node, at the expense of
healthy nodes. This will provide more occasions and time
to retransmit the packets, hence decrease the latency. To
support this assumption, we increased the bandwidth
allocation for all nodes in the body area network, and
repeated the evaluation protocol for two volunteers. In both
cases, a significant reduction of the average latency (> 100
ms) is obtained. The percentage of occupation of the Last
list provides an indication of the degraded radio link. Easily
266
monitored in real-time, it provides a possible input for
adapting the bandwidth allocation on the flight.
Finally, real-time adaptation of the network parameters
could be done based on the general sensor node context
(node location, battery level, type of activity). For
instance, extracted features from biosignals, such as average
heart rate of a patient, could be used as an input to the QoS
layer which would tune the inserted delays to further reduce
the node lifetime. Similarly, if the QoS stack is already full,
considering event-based transmission (e.g. heart beat) by
locally switching on DSP algorithm (heart beat detector)
rather than streaming of ECG data could be a solution.
VI. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a multi-stage low-complexity QoS layer
suitable for ambulatory condition was presented. The QoS
layer defined a re-transmission protocol which consists of a
set of linked-lists interconnected in such a way that different
types of defined services could be guaranteed. To accurately
assess the performances of the proposed QoS layer, data was
collected on four healthy volunteers. Each of them was asked
to follow a defined evaluation protocol, simulating
ambulatory conditions, while wearing a sensor network. The
QoS layer allows to significantly reduce the PER, from 2.5%
without retransmission to almost 0% for the experimental
conditions considered in this study. The cost of this PER
reduction in terms of energy and latency is quantified. In
average, a 90% reduction in PER is associated to a increase
of 7% in energy consumption, and to a latency of 350 ms.
Reducing the memory allocated to the QoS layer is shown to
significantly impact the performances.
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