Energy Budget Based Multiple Attribute Decision Making (EB-MADM) Algorithm for Cooperative Clustering in Wireless Body Area Networks

Introduction A wireless network of biosensor nodes, attached to different parts of the patient body, is termed as Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN). WBANs offer a real-time data monitoring platform for biological health parameters like blood pressure, heart rate, and glucose level, etc. Objectives Low-power consumption is an essential WBAN design requirement due to limited power resources of biosensor nodes. Methods Present work proposes the design of low power, clustering based data routing protocol for WBANs. Proposed protocol incorporates a novel "Energy Budget based Multiple Attributes Decision Making Algorithm (EB-MADM)" for dynamic cluster head selection. The algorithm selects an optimum node as cluster head which has the higher residual energy level and performs data routing at the cost of least network residual energy loss. EB-MADM selects a new cluster head for each transmission round and distributes cluster head load evenly among cluster nodes. It results in enhanced network lifetime. Proposed protocol incorporates another low power technique termed as "Cooperative effort of cluster nodes". This technique saves node transmission energy by prohibiting redundant data from transmission. Results The proposed protocol is simulated using MATLAB tool and the performance results are compared with existing WBAN protocols. Conclusions Proposed protocol shows better performance in terms of network lifetime, stability period, throughput, and propagation delay.