Performance Comparison of WBAN Routing

Protocols
Asma S. Alzahrani and Khaled Almotairi
Department of Computer and Information System
University of Umm AL-Qura
Makkah, Saudi Arabia
S43680144@st.uqu.edu.sa and khmotairi@uqu.edu.sa

Abstract— Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) are a small

network of sensor nodes that are deployed either inside or outside
the human body. Due to the limited transmission range and
battery constraint in WBAN, the routing protocols will play a
very important role in making the communication between the
nodes more effective and also prolonging the lifetime of a WBAN.
In the last few years, development and evaluation of the routing
protocols in WBAN have been an important and attractive
research topic, especially for applications in medical monitoring.
The selection of WBAN routing algorithms aims to provide a way
of communication that has energy efficiency and is consistent and
dependable in real-time applications that involve the
heterogeneous type of sensor nodes. A diverse range of new
routing protocols that are specifically targeted at this
environment have been developed, but the information available
on the performance of each protocol and the comparisons
between their performances is very little. This paper will provide
a quantitative analysis comparing the performance of WBAN
routing protocols. In this paper, we will out forth the results of
detailed simulations that depict the relative performance of the
three most recent routing protocols from the five existing routing
categories for WBSN (M-ATTEMPT, CICADA, and PRPLC).
Those protocols were chosen since they utilize different routing
strategies to improve energy efficiency and other requirements.
We briefly mention and explain the design of these protocols to
help explain their effects on a network. The protocols were
carefully implemented according to their specifications published
and based on the IEEE 802.15.6 standard. The comparison is
done in an OMNeT++ environment and the results of the
simulations show that the M-ATTEMPT protocol provides the
network stability period as well as good throughput.
Keywords- Wireless Network; WBAN; Routing Protocol
I. INTRODUCTION
Wireless Sensor Networking (WSN) has revolutionized our
everyday lives as it utilizes many technological applications
such as tracking, automation, controlling and monitoring [1].
The WSN revolution recently shifted its focus to a technology
that suited the movements of the human body by inventing a
technology that can be implanted either inside the human body
or can be integrated on the body as a wearable device, like a
wristwatch. This technology is called the Wireless Body Area
Network (WBAN). The IEEE 802.15.6-working group
established the first draft of the communication standard of
WBANs in April 2010. This standard is specifically optimized
978-1-7281-0108-8/19/$31.00©2019 IEEE
Fig. 1. WBAN Communication Architecture
for low-power on-body/in-body nodes for numerous
applications that are both medical and non-medical [2]. The
approved version of the IEEE 802.15.6 standard was officially
and formally accepted in February 2012 [3]. WBAN used small
sensor nodes that are deployed around the body to monitor
specific targets and gather real-time data. It is not necessary to
deploy the sensor nodes inside the human body; they can either
be implanted over or around the human body. The generalized
communication architecture of a WBAN is shown in Fig.1. The
architecture is for both applications, medical and non-medical,
where WBAN communication is classified into three tiers [4].
All of the sensor nodes in a WBAN transfer their data to the
sink, which then transfers the data to an external server through
various interfaces. This paper is focused on tier 1, in which
different types of sensors having different parameters are used
in a WBAN which are implanted on different parts of the
human body. Then, the sensor nodes forward the data to the
sink directly or indirectly through relay nodes. A battery is the
main power source for sensor nodes and is a scarce resource.
The sensor nodes consume most of their energy in transceiving
data packets. When sensor nodes have their battery drained,
they die and stop covering the area they were put on.
Therefore, energy conservation becomes a vital concern in
WBANs. One approach for reducing the energy consumption
and prolonging the network lifetime is to specify a route with
minimum energy cost needs to be selected for the transmission
of data and the routing algorithm should take care of latency
and thermal effects. Many routing protocols have been
proposed for WBANs which are classified according to their
nature and structure. They are categorized into five categories
namely temperature-aware routing protocols, QoS-aware
routing protocols, cluster-based routing protocols, cross-
layered routing protocols, and postural-movement based
routing protocols. Each category of the routing protocols aims
to satisfy only a specific requirement of the WBANs. The
IEEE 802.15.6 standard focuses on low complexity, cost
efficiency, less power consumption and reliable transmission as
its design goals. So, a routing algorithm must not only support
a diverse range of devices, but it should also satisfy these
design requirements for a WBAN.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Section II
introduces some of the related works presented in the literature.
Section III mentions the three routing protocols which we
selected for the purpose of comparison in the paper. Section IV
analyzes the comparison of the performance of the protocols
which we mentioned in section III followed by section V with
the conclusion.
II. RELATED WORKS
In the past few years, several research papers have been
published on topics regarding the studies and comparison of
routing protocols in WBANs. For example, the authors in [5],
have examined the performance of three ad hoc routing
protocols namely AODV, DSR, and DSDV, based on distinct
attributes of the WBAN using the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC
Protocol. The results were obtained for the metrics: packet
delivery ratio and end to end delay. The overall observation of
AODV routing protocol shows better performance in terms of
packet delivery fraction and throughput but it suffers from the
delay. The authors in [6] have compared three protocols out of
which two protocols are designed for WBAN (SIMPLE,
ATTEMPT) and one protocol DEEC is designed for WSN. The
routing protocols have been compared based on clustering in
terms of the number of nodes alive, the number of nodes dead,
packet transmission and residual energy. The Results show that
DEEC protocol performs better than the other two protocols.
The authors in [7] analyze the performance of a number of
routing protocols in a WSN environment and compare the
same in a WBAN environment. The protocols compared are as
follows AODV, DSDV, DSR, and AOMDV. The results were
obtained for the following metrics: packet delivery ratio, delay,
and throughput.
Indeed, WSN and WBAN work very differently in many
aspects of the challenges such as lifetime, data rates,
replacement, quantity, working environment and power supply
of the sensor nodes. Taking all these hurdles into consideration,
hugs efforts are being put in the design of protocols that are
suitable for WBANs when it comes to energy efficiency. On
the network layer, various routing protocols with different
characteristics have been proposed. A review of WBAN
protocols may be found in [8].
The authors in [9] analyzed every single routing protocol
by comparing their performances in relation to each other
against other state-of-the-art plans and have recognized the
relative pros and cons of each. In this comparison, we will
focus and compare three energy efficient routing protocols (M-
ATTEMPT, CICADA, and PRPLC) from a different
classification of routing protocols for WBAN.
III. PROTOCOLS OVERVIEW
In this section, we briefly describe the key features of the
M-ATTEMPT, CICADA and PRPLC protocols studied in our
simulation. Each one of these protocols uses a different
topology to improve energy efficiency and other requirements.
A. Mobility- supporting Adaptive Threshold-based Thermal-
aware Energy-efficient Multi-Hop Protocol (M-
ATTEMPT)[10]
M-ATTEMPT is basically built for heterogeneous
networks. The network architecture is composed of the base
station which is the sink node and it is placed in the chest with
eight nodes extending from the sink that are arranged in
descending order of their data rates. Nodes having higher data
rates are deployed at places that are less mobile. These nodes
are known as parent nodes. They are connected directly to the
sink. Such nodes which are directly connected to parent nodes
are known as level 1, child nodes.
 Initial Phase: All the nodes, at regular intervals
transmit HELLO messages which contain information
such as the distance from sink nodes which is
calculated based on the hops count and neighboring
node’s information. In every count, this information is
then updated.
 Routing Phase: In this phase, the selected algorithm is
the shortest path algorithm. The path length is
determined by the number of hops. If multiple routes
have the same number of minimum hops, then the path
which consumes the least amount of energy is selected.
If the data is critical, the nodes send their data directly
to the sink. This protocol supports both single and
multi-hop communication.
 Scheduling Phase: In this phase, a Time Division
Multiple Access (TDMA) is created by the sink node
for scheduling between the sink and root nodes. All the
nodes use their specified time slots to transmit the data
to the sink node.
M-ATTEMPT is one of the routing protocols which is used
in the temperature-aware routing protocols class [11]. The
main goal of M-ATTEMPT is to avoid link hot spot which
means avoiding overheating by minimizing the system
temperature. The sensors that are used in WBAN are either
attached on the body or placed on the inside of the body. In
WBAN data transmission needs to be continuous. This
continuous transmission process of the body sensors causes the
temperature to increase.
B. Cascading Information retrieval by Controlling Access
with Distributed slot Assignment Protocol (CICADA) [12]
This protocol is an energy efficient cross-layer protocol that
handles both MAC and routing layer. It uses a spanning tree
structure. This tree is used to route data to the sink with
guaranteed collision-free access to the medium, low
interference, and avoidance of idle listening. Data transfer is
defined by a sequence of cycles. Each cycle is divided into a
control sub-cycle and a data sub-cycle. Each sub-cycle has its
own scheme (the control and data scheme respectively) for slot
allocation.
 Control Sub-cycle: This sub-cycle is used to generate
the control and data schemes from parents to their
children, and the children are assigned their
transmission time slots. When every node has received
its scheme, the control cycle stops, and the data cycle
begins. In the control sub-cycle, one slot is assigned to
each node. When a node receives its scheme packet
from its parent in the assigned slot in the control sub-
cycle, it can go to sleep since no more packets will be
arriving in that particular slot. It will only become
active in the slot where it is sending its own scheme to
its children.
 Data Sub-cycle: In this, the data is forwarded to the
sink from the nodes. The first nodes which send data
are located at the bottom of the tree. This way, all of
the collected data from the different nodes can be
forwarded to the sink within one cycle itself. When a
node sends a packet, it also sends metadata which
contains its own waiting period and data period.
Cross -routing protocol is used for solving the challenges
and problems at multiple layers at the same time [13]. This
ability makes these protocols very useful for improving the
overall performance of a network. This protocol makes use of
the same packets to take care of routing and medium access,
together.
of this protocol is to avoid packet loss and buffering by
choosing the most probable link from the links that are
available for routing the packet.
Probabilistic-based routing protocol takes into account the
cost function to determine and select the best path. The cost
function relies upon the distance to the sink from the sensors
and residual energy. It gets updated after each round. The path
with the minimum cost function then gets selected.
IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
We have compared the performance of three protocols (M-
ATTEMPT, CICADA, and PRPLC), with regards to the
number of nodes that died in every round, residual energy and
packets sent to sink, by using OMNeT++.
Fig.2 shows the deployment of nodes on various parts of
the human body. All sensor nodes are affixed according to
specific (x, y) coordinates in the simulation area and the sink
node is located at the center of the network. It is observed that
the routing protocol seems to be performing better when the
sink node is deployed at the center of the body probably due to
the distance between the nodes and the sink being slightly
reduced [16]. First radio model [17] parameters are used for
better performance, less energy consumption, and accurate
result. The simulation parameters are described in TABLE 1.

C. Probabilistic Routing with Postural Link Cost Protocol

(PRPLC) [14]
In PRPLC routing protocol the architecture of the
Probabilistic Routing protocol is same as on-body store and
flood routing [15]. The network architecture of this protocol is
composed of seven sensor nodes, two on the ankles, two on the
thighs, two on the upper arms and one node on the waist arm.
The sink node is placed on the right ankle. It is responsible for
gathering all of the raw data from the other sensor nodes in the
network and then sending the organized results to an external
server that is situated outside the human body, which results in
multi-point-to-point routing.
PRPLC sets a link likelihood factor (LLF), the
Fig. 2. Nodes Placement
probability for a link between nodes and to be connected
over a discrete time slot . Every node shares its LLF to the
neighboring nodes and the sink node and sends a data packet to TABLE I. SIMULATION PARAMETERS
the destination when its LLF is less or equal to the neighbor’s
LLF. Other than that, the data packet is in buffering until a Parameters Value
suitable node is found for the next-hop to occur. The LLF is
supposed to be updated dynamically at frequent intervals t as: Simulation Tool OMNeT++
Number of Nodes 8

 Size of Network 2m x 2m
(1) Sink Location Center of human body
Advance node: 0.6J
Initial Energy
Normal node: 0.4J
Where ‘ ’ is a tuning factor over a time window, it is a Packet Size 2000 bits
constant and its range is . All nodes maintain and Data aggregation 5 nJ/bit
keep updating their LLF with all neighboring nodes and the
MAC Layer TDMA
sink, by sending HELLO messages at fixed intervals. The goal
Radio Model Chipcon CC2420
Number of rounds 5000 rounds
 The performance metrics and results are given below:
A. Nerwork Lifetime & Stability Period
Network Lifetime is basically the time from the start of a
network until the expiring of the last node in that network.
Stability Period is the time before the first node in the network
dies. As there are eight sensor nodes used in this scenario, the
lifetime of these sensors determines the lifetime of the network
and the network stability and can be observed in Fig.3. This
shows the comparison between the three protocols with regard
to the nodes that died out and their rounds. We can see that the
first node of the PRPLC routing protocol dies at slightly above
1000 rounds while in M-ATTEMT routing protocol, the first
node dies at around 3000 rounds. So, it can be concluded that
the M-ATTEMPT protocol has higher network stability as
compared to the CICADA & PRPLC protocols. Also, it may be
observed that the first 4 nodes in CICADA and M-ATTEMPT
die in a very quick session. Both protocols depend only in
multi-hop, nodes near the sink are heavily burdened and
consume more energy in the form of reception and data
aggregation energy.
specific characteristics, attributes, and unique requirements. In
this paper, we have evaluated and compared the performance
of three energy efficient routing protocols in terms of network
lifetime, throughput and residual energy. The comparison of
(M-ATTEMPT, CICADA, and PRPCL) has been done by
simulations in OMNeT++. Deploying sensor nodes on the
human body and using the radio model to find their results. The
results show that M-ATTEMPT protocol performs better than
the other two protocols in terms of maximizing lifetime,
throughput, and minimizing the energy consumption.
In future work. We will focus on energy efficient routing
protocols with the mobility model for the movement of nodes
placed on the human body in WBAN.

B. Throughput
It represents the number of packets received successfully at
the sink. It is clear from Fig.4. That PRPLC protocol sends to
the sink till 2000 rounds whereas the other two protocols
transmit data to the sink till 3000 rounds. M-ATTEMPT
protocol achieves high throughput in comparison of CICADA Fig. 3. Number of dead nodes
and PRPLC.

C. Residual Energy
It represents the difference between the starting energy of
the nodes and the energy of the nodes after completing a round.
Network is equipped with two types of sensor nodes in terms
of initial energy. There are normal nodes with initial energy
equal to 0.4 joules, whereas, advanced nodes have 0.6 joules as
initial energy. The initial total energy of all four protocols is
kept the same as 4 joules. Fig.5 shows the plotted graph of
residual energy vs. round. Over here till 3000 rounds, the
residual energy of M-ATTEMPT protocol nodes is higher.
After that, the residual energy is seen decreasing as the number
of rounds increases further. The number of packets that are
received also relies upon the number of nodes that are alive.
Hence, network lifetime and throughput hold direct Fig. 4. Throughput
correspondence. As in M-ATTEMPT, till rounds 3000, the
number of dead nodes is 0 and after that the number of dead
nodes becomes four. Thus, a shift in residual energy can be
expected as shown in the graph.
The summary of the results has been given in TABLE 2.
The comparisons between the protocols have been done on the
basis of a diverse range of parameters and variables such as
their type of classification, network lifetime, first node death,
proper techniques used for that routing protocols throughput
and residual energy.

V. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK

The development and design of routing protocols that have
energy efficiency for WBAN is a very difficult task due to their Fig. 5. Residual Energy
 TABLE II. Summary of Results
Protocol Type Topology Routing Network First Node Throughput Residual
Criteria Lifetime Death Energy
(rounds) (rounds)
M- Temperature Star structure Minimum (3700) (3115) High High
ATTEMPT aware no. of hops
CICADA Cross based Spanning Multi hops (3000) (2300) Medium Medium
Tree
PRPLC Postural Mesh Link (2100) (1000) Low Low
movement Topology Stability
based

[10] N. Javaid, Z. Abbas, M. Fareed, Z. Khan, and N. Alrajeh, “M-

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