On Research Challenges in Hybrid Medium-Access Control Protocols for IEEE 802.15.6 WBANs

• Published in: IEEE sensors journal Vol. 19; no. 19; pp. 8543 - 8555
• Main Authors: Saboor, Abdul, Ahmad, Rizwan, Ahmed, Waqas, Kiani, Adnan K., Moullec, Yannick Le, Alam, Muhammad Mahtab
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.10.2019; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Access control; Body area networks; carrier sense multiple access/collision avoidance (CSMA/CA); Collision avoidance; emergency traffic (ET); Hybrid MAC; IEEE 802.15 Standard; Media Access Protocol; Parameter identification; Protocol (computers); quality of service (QoS); Quality of service architectures; remote monitoring; Sensors; time division multiple access (TDMA); wireless body area network (WBAN); Wireless communication; Wireless networks
• ISSN: 1530-437X; 1558-1748
• DOI: 10.1109/JSEN.2018.2883786

IEEE 802.15.6 is a wireless body area network (WBAN) standard proposed to facilitate the exponentially growing interest in the field of health monitoring. This standard is flexible and outlines multiple basic medium-access control (MAC) protocols that are contention based and collision free to meet the WBAN quality-of-service (QoS) challenges. Typically, current research trends in WBAN MAC focus on designing a hybrid MAC that is a combination of basic MAC protocols. In this paper, we provide a first detailed survey of existing hybrid MAC protocols based on the IEEE 802.15.6, which would be useful for the related research community. First, this paper lists the design challenges of a WBAN MAC. Second, it highlights the significance of hybrid MAC protocols in meeting the design challenges while comparing them to standard MAC protocols. Third, a critical and thorough comparison of existing hybrid MAC protocols is presented in terms of network QoS and WBAN specific parameters. Finally, we identify key open research areas that are often neglected in hybrid MAC design and further propose some possible directions for future research.