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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.
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 Figure 1. A typical body area network configuration for multi-modal
physiological and activity monitoring
optimized towards the application-specific requirements. For
instance, the QoS requirements differ depending on the data
analysis methods. For real-time applications, latency is A. Services in BAN: definition
critical. For off-line diagnosis based on sensor data recorded Based on considerations from the medical community,
in ambulatory settings, data consistency is highly relevant the following set of services is found to be the most relevant
while latency requirements may be loosened up. for BAN applications: data consistency, latency, node
Previous work in Quality-of-Service for BAN has been lifetime and memory availability.
mainly focused on extracting network performance The data consistency represents the quality of the
parameters, and adapting QoS policies accordingly [2]. Such (wireless) network traffic, and is measured by the difference
an example includes the measurement of signal strength as between the amount of sent and received application data. It
an indicator of radio link quality [3]. In this paper, we is characterized by the Packet Error Rate (PER).
propose a flexible QoS layer ensuring the realization of The latency symbolizes the time delay between the
particular services defined by the application. Targeted at sampling of a data point and its availability for the
low-power, resource-constrained sensor nodes, the proposed application. Important contributors to the overall latency
method minimizes the required computing complexity and include: local buffering on the node, wireless transmission
(MAC) and quality-of-service management. In this work we
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First, a packet is fetched out from the Free list to the cleared out as soon as possible to free up the memory, no
back of the Application list by the application layer. It delaying has been envisioned for this specific queue.
remains in the Application list as long as remaining space
can be used by the application to further store samples or III. IMPLEMENTATION AND EVALUATION PROTOCOL
output of DSP algorithms.
Once released by the application to the First list, it stays A. Body area network platform
in this list until the MAC grants it the permission to be sent, The body area network platform used for implementation
i.e, pushed into RadioTX list. To guarantee certain latency, of the proposed QoS layer consists of three types of devices:
packets coming from the First list are always granted the a sensor node, a central node and a PC node.
highest access priority. The second priority level is assigned The sensor node is composed of two principal electrical
to the Delayed list in order to also respect a second, less components selected for their low power characteristics: the
stringent latency. microcontroller unit, Texas instrument MSP430F1611
Once the packet lies in the RadioTx list, the MAC layer featuring 10KB of RAM and 48 KB of ROM [6], and the
sends it out to the radio and awaits for the status of the radio transceiver, Nordic Semiconductor nRF24L01 [4]. A
transmission attempt (Success or Failure). Depending on this 160 mAh-battery provides largely enough power for the
transmission attempt outcome, the resource would be either duration of the experiment. External sensors such as
released to the Free list or swapped to the Delayed list. biopotential sensor for ECG or EMG measurements, or
Being in the re-transmission state, either in the Delayed accelerometer can also be connected to the sensor node
list or Last list reveals that the radio link has been through a general-purpose input/output external connector.
interrupted when the packet was sent. As opposed to short- The 20x25mm2 sensor node weights less than 10 grams and
term re-transmissions often carried out at the MAC or PHY is packaged into a 50x40x10mm2 plastic box. The plastic
level, meant to mostly attenuate the effect of radio box is strapped to the body limbs, ensuring the sensor node
interferences, the purpose of the delays induced by the QoS to remain in place throughout the experiment.
layer is to cope with channel interruption inherent to the The central node records the data during the experiment.
application. For instance, in ambulatory condition, the radio It is an enhanced version of the sensor node which includes a
link between a sensor node placed around the ankle and the SD-card slot for long-term storage purposes. Its package
central chest node may be impaired for few hundreds of form factor is similar to the sensor note.
milliseconds while the patients is walking (body swing). The PC node, a sensor node feature with a serial-to-USB
Therefore, to avoid unnecessary re-transmissions yielding to FTDI chip, is constantly connected to the computer to track
a major power consumption increase, the re-transmission of the different phases of the experiment. Each time the healthy
packets belonging to the Delayed list is delayed by up to subject is asked to switch tasks, a software event is sent to
several hundreds of milliseconds. Each delayed list is thus the network to synchronize the incoming data with the
characterized by a lower and upper retransmission delay. protocol timesheet.
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) (N)
(0) (0)
Delayed #1
Tx Failure
Delay retransmission
Delayed #N
Last
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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 IV. RESULTS
implemented in C and compiled using the IAR toolchain for The proposed QoS layer is evaluated using the protocol
MSP430. The number of Delayed queue is limited to one defined in previous section. Four healthy volunteers, aged
and its corresponding delay parameters are respectively from 23 to 32, have been enrolled in the study. Performances
300ms (2 beacons) for the lower boundary and 800 ms (8 of the QoS are analyzed off-line based on the network related
beacons) for the upper boundary. Excluding the buffers, the data recorded during the experiment. First, the ability of the
entire network stack, including the radio driver, the MAC QoS layer to reduce packet loss (improve data consistency)
and QoS layer, fits in 2.1 KB of RAM and 13.8 KB of is reported. This comes to a certain cost, and the trade-offs
program memory. 100 bytes of RAM and 3.36 KB of with other services are then discussed. The impact of the
program memory are dedicated to the only QoS layer. memory available for QoS management on the performances
is also characterized.
D. Evaluation protocol
The performances of the proposed QoS layer are A. QoS achieves significant reduction in PER
evaluated following an experiment protocol mimicking To quantify the effect of the proposed QoS layer on the
daily-life activities. A population of healthy individuals, PER, the origin of each transmitted packet that is the last
equipped with a body area network, were asked to perform a queue type before transmission, is recorded. Using this
set of ambulatory tasks at the gym. The task list presented in information, it is possible to estimate how many packets
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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
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
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Figure 5 illustrates the cost in terms of PER and the gain monitored in real-time, it provides a possible input for
in terms of energy as QoS memory allocation reduces. adapting the bandwidth allocation on the flight.
Memory allocation is quantified as the number of QoS Finally, real-time adaptation of the network parameters
packets allocated in the memory pool. The slow decrease in could be done based on the general sensor node context
PER as memory increases suggests that a high data (node location, battery level, type of activity). For
consistency can only be obtained by significantly enlarging instance, extracted features from biosignals, such as average
the memory pool. The reason is that in ambulatory heart rate of a patient, could be used as an input to the QoS
monitoring, a sensor node could be obstructed from the layer which would tune the inserted delays to further reduce
receiver for few seconds which could only be coped with by the node lifetime. Similarly, if the QoS stack is already full,
using large memory buffers. considering event-based transmission (e.g. heart beat) by
Consequently, there is no guarantee that a PER of 0% can locally switching on DSP algorithm (heart beat detector)
be achieved, even if all QoS lists are enabled. This is due to rather than streaming of ECG data could be a solution.
limited memory availability: the more memory allocated to
the QoS layer, the higher the PER reduction. But Figure 5 VI. CONCLUSION
suggests that achieving a PER of strictly 0% would require In this paper, a multi-stage low-complexity QoS layer
infinite memory. suitable for ambulatory condition was presented. The QoS
layer defined a re-transmission protocol which consists of a
V. DISCUSSION set of linked-lists interconnected in such a way that different
In previous section we have shown how the proposed types of defined services could be guaranteed. To accurately
QoS layer significantly reduces PER, and evaluated the cost assess the performances of the proposed QoS layer, data was
in energy and latency. The validation protocol presented in collected on four healthy volunteers. Each of them was asked
this paper has been designed to mimic daily-life activities. It to follow a defined evaluation protocol, simulating
does not account, however, for all possible situations in ambulatory conditions, while wearing a sensor network. The
ambulatory conditions. Furthermore, sport clothes are QoS layer allows to significantly reduce the PER, from 2.5%
generally lighter than casual clothes which may create without retransmission to almost 0% for the experimental
additional obstruction to the radio signal. In addition, data conditions considered in this study. The cost of this PER
collection was carried out at the gym during where Bluetooth reduction in terms of energy and latency is quantified. In
or Wifi interferences are less important than in other average, a 90% reduction in PER is associated to a increase
environments. of 7% in energy consumption, and to a latency of 350 ms.
A limitation of the proposed QoS layer is that it can only Reducing the memory allocated to the QoS layer is shown to
cope with sporadic packet losses. If the radio signal is significantly impact the performances.
blocked for more than few tens of seconds, depending on the
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