ABSTRACT
Recent trends in wireless technologies gave birth to the wireless body area network (WBAN), in which tiny, intelligent, low powered, and invasive/non-invasive sensor nodes are deployed inside or outside the human body. These sensor nodes are operated with a limited energy source. So, an energy efficient routing and reliable communication are major concerns in WBAN. WBAN is also called a patient monitoring system, which facilitates electronic governance (e-governance). e-Governance offers ease and convenience of doorstep delivery in the remotest places with transparency in a cost-effective manner. A number of routing protocols of WBANs have been discussed in this chapter. Data rate and power requirement of WBAN, stated by IEEE 802.15.6 have also been discussed. In this chapter, the work of EERDT (energy efficient and reliable data transfer) and SIMPLE (stable increased-throughput multihop link efficiency) routing protocols have been enhanced. To select the forwarder, the maximum value of the square root over the sum of average residual energy of sensor nodes and square of average of cost function is used. The simulation has been done in MATLAB™ 7.6 and performance is evaluated using different criteria like throughput, network stability, nodes’ residual energy, and so on. Results showed that enhanced EERDT has the better performance in terms of throughput, residual energy, and the stability period of the network as compared with enhanced SIMPLE.
