Third 2008 International Conference on Convergence and Hybrid Information Technology

QoS issues with focus on Wireless Body Area Networks

M.A. Ameen, Ahsanun Nessa, Kyung Sup Kwak

Graduate School of IT & Telecommunications, Inha University, Korea m.ameen@hotmail.com

Abstract
Wireless body area networks (WBAN) applications have emerged as one of the hottest research areas of wireless sensor networks (WSN). With the advent of miniature, cost effective and wearable sensor devices, WBAN has attracted large amount of research time. Lots of works are going on in this direction. Besides open issues in WSN like standardization, energy efficiency, security and privacy factors, QoS issues are also of major concern. Lots of research is going on around the world to improve QoS factors in sensor networks. Some people have suggested protocols with QoS focus for WSN. But QoS requirements vary from application to application. It is fact that the heterogeneous working requirements of WBAN define different QoS issues which are specific to that particular application area only. WBAN applications are very sensitive and hence QoS issues in WBAN require more attention and focus and should be taken up more seriously. In this paper we have tried to present various aspects of QoS with focus on WBAN. We have also tried to present other factors that particularly influence the overall quality of service in WBAN. Keywords: Quality of Service (QoS), WBAN, WSN, QoS Perspectives, Goals, QoS Metrics, QoS Requirements

Fig -1 A typical WBAN application [12]

1. Introduction
Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are made of spatially distributed tiny electronic devices that are low powered and cost effective. The possible application scenarios [2] of WSN, which are envisaged at the moment, include environmental monitoring, military surveillance digitally equipped homes, health monitoring, manufacturing process monitoring, conferences, vehicle tracking and detection (telemetric), and monitoring inventory control.

Wireless sensor networks that can be used to actively monitor human activities have become great research interest in recent years. Applications are being designed and issues related to this field are being taken up. Demand of wearable wireless devices has been on the rise day by day. Due to this, a new concept of people centric and urban wireless sensor networking is on the rise [3]. Applications focused on monitoring health status of patients have been on demand lately and various projects [5] [6] are on the development and implementation stages. A simple WBAN application scenario has been shown in Fig-1. Sensor networks are being researched and deployed for this purpose. Typical application scenarios could be monitoring of heart beats, body temperature, body positions, location of the subject, overall monitoring of ill patients both in hospital and at home and so on. This domain area is normally called wireless body area sensor networks (WBASN) or sometimes as wireless body area networks or simply WBAN. Quality of service (or QoS) is one of the aspects of any application. QoS research is not new; prior research has focused on managing and reserving resources in the Internet, wireless networks, and ad hoc networks [1]. QoS in wireless sensor network as a whole has been a great research interest in recent times. But it is a fact that in sensor networks, QoS issues

978-0-7695-3407-7/08 $25.00 2008 IEEE DOI 10.1109/ICCIT.2008.130

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didnt get lots of attention like other aspects such as architecture and protocol design, energy conservation, location and positioning of nodes [2]. Works on QoS studies particularly focused on WBAN applications are not done much yet. Many authors [5, 13, 14] just mentioned it as an issue but no further studies have been made by them. Author such as [10] tried take up QoS in WBAN with regard to combating channel impairment. The QoS issues in WBAN need more attention due to the critical level of operations. For example, WBAN that is being used to monitor the health of an elderly heart patient needs highest quality of service in its operations. Aspects such as deployment, security, privacy, and energy related issues are being researched widely for both WSN and WBAN. This paper has been motivated by the recent studies with respect to WBAN applications and rise of human centric or so called people centric computing using wearable sensing devices. In this paper we have tried to present the various QoS issues that are related to WBAN along with WSN. This paper has been organized as follows. In section 1, we presented a brief introduction of the subject matter. In section 2, we discuss the QoS in wireless sensor networks and extended it to WBAN. We also discuss QoS perspectives, goals and metrics. In section 3, we discuss the major challenges to QoS support. In section 4, we discuss some protocols with focus on QoS. In section 5, we discuss various QoS requirements and in section 6, we discuss some open research issues of QoS and then finally the conclusion.

authors [23] say that QoS is a general term that incorporates bandwidth, latency, and jitter to describe a network's ability to customize the treatment of specific classes of data. In practice, QoS requirements differ from one application to another; however, they can be specified in terms of reliability, timeliness, robustness, trustworthiness, and adaptability, among others. Some QoS metrics may be used to measure the degree of satisfaction of these services [9]. Although QoS research in computing is not new, in sensor network applications it is still a largely unexplored research field. This is mainly because WSNs are different from traditional networks [7]. Also most of works regarding QoS have been done in traditional networking areas. Due to ever demanding and advancements in WSN technology, QoS research is gaining momentum lately and thereby influencing WBAN applications too. QoS specific to WBAN is becoming a hot research area. 2.1. QoS Perspectives and Goals Traditional QoS are viewed in two perspectives application and network. In the first case, QoS generally refers to the quality as perceived by the user/application. But in networking perspective, QoS is accepted as a measure of the service quality that the network offers to the applications/users [8]. The two QoS perspectives can be demonstrated via a simple model [8] shown in Fig-2. Also in application Applications/Users perspective, QoS refers to an assurance to provide a set of measurable service Requirements QoS Support attributes to the end-toend users/applications in terms of parameters as Network mentioned earlier such as delay, jitter, available Fig-2: A simple QoS model Fig -1: A Simple QoS model [8] bandwidth, and packet [8] loss. From the network perspective, the networks goal is to provide the QoS services while maximizing network resource utilization. To achieve this goal, the network is required to analyze the application requirements and deploy various network QoS mechanisms [7].

2. QoS in WSN to WBAN

The Quality of Service (QoS) term is an overloaded term with various meanings and perspectives. There is little consensus on the precise definition of QoS. Different people and communities perceive and interpret QoS in different ways [8]. The definitions vary from application to applications. Various authors have defined QoS according to that particular application or area. Hence a particular definition of QoS related to sensor networks has yet to be derived. Some authors such as [22] have defined QoS as the optimum number of sensors that should be sending information at any given time. PC magazine Jargon Buster [22] defines it as a generic term for measuring and maintaining the quality of network characteristics such as transmission and error rates. While some other

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The current QoS effort can be categorized as best effort (no QoS), guaranteed services (hard QoS) or differentiated services (soft QoS). So goals should include to fulfill any of the above three categories as per the requirements of the application [10]. QoS goals should include the maximization of services by the network by minimal usage of energy (Energy consumption) and efficient bandwidth utilization [7]. These should also take care of the facts that in any sensor network such as WBAN, we have limited computational resources, limited memory and limited time (deadlines) for an event. This is particularly tough to meet in hard resource wanting and mission critical environments. 2.2. QoS Metrics It has been an important question to ask what the appropriate QoS metrics are for WSN [20]. Hence we also feel that the same question should also be asked for WBAN. Traditional Data Networks [7] have common QoS requirements and same end-to-end parameters are used. Here specific techniques to realize QoS support are diverse due to unique properties of underlying networks. The conventional networks employ end-to-end metrics [16]. Also it is shown that traditional QoS metrics do not apply in sensor networks applications [21]. So it has been deduced that end-toend does not necessary apply in WBAN too. Therefore the QoS metrics should be different from what we know in traditional networking environment. Sometimes the sensors are deployed in large numbers to increase the efficiency of the system. It is also very costly to check quality of service of individual sensors used in a typical application domain of WBAN. Hence it is necessary to consider the network as a whole or at least to use network in part. So, QoS metrics in WBAN should consider the fact that one need to focus on collective services rather than going for individual sensors. But we also feel that it might not be the case always. For example, single sensor enabled wearable devices. But these devices are yet to become common daily life items. 2.3. QoS in Homogenous and Heterogeneous Environments WBAN though special kind of wireless sensor network, the services here vary widely. For example, an elderly people/patient monitoring system [11] mentions the need of the person to be both at home/hospital and

outside. In such scenarios, it becomes a must to use heterogeneous technology models to keep the patient in monitoring phase as shown in Fig-3.

Fig-3: An elderly healthcare monitoring system architecture [11]

Here we can observe that the network technology may change from time to time. So, QoS in WBAN varies in the context of application requirements. Applications which are fixed type such as monitoring patient in hospital beds, QoS requirements may less complex than applications where WLAN, GPRS, UMTS technologies are used simultaneously.

3. Major Challenges to QoS support in WBAN

Meeting QoS requirements in sensor networks is difficult task [2,7]. There are major limitations to this. Some challenges limitations are described below. The same cases apply for WBAN too as it is a subset of WSN. Some authors [4, 7, 9, 17] have described the major technical challenges for supporting QoS requirements as overcoming bandwidth limitation, effective energy and delay trade-off, handling buffer size limitation, supporting multiple traffic types, and the removal of redundancy. These all are applicable to WBAN applications too. We can summarize those factors with respect to WBAN applications as follows Resource limitations: The most severe constraint a sensor node restricted by is the limited access to battery power, limited bandwidth of the wireless channel, limited processing capabilities, memory, buffer size as well as the transmission power of the sensor nodes. So we can clearly see that under such resource restricted properties traditional QoS of routing and MAC protocols are not applicable in WBAN applications at all. Unpredictable traffic patterns: QoS support in traditional networks is often dependent on a certain periodicity of the data traffic. But we all know that in WBAN, it is entirely different. Sometimes we might experience

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data burst, sometimes no traffic and sometimes real time responses required such as in the emergency case of heart failure scenarios. Network instability: the network topology might change frequently due to- link failure, power failure, and mobility of the nodes. Also for the fact that sometimes certain devices need not to be in operational mode and hence are in sleep mode to save energy. This changes the network structure. The network topology might change frequently. Routing and medium access under these unstable conditions is challenging Network dynamics: It may arise from dynamic topology changes and unreliable nature of wireless networks. Dynamic topology can change in WBAN due to node mobility, failure, and addition of new nodes. Unreliable nature of wireless links may cause havoc in emergency data transfer. Hence it increases complexity of QoS support. Energy balance: This is always a key concern in all sensor networks application areas. Hence it always requires careful management of the energy resources. The energy load must be evenly distributed among all sensor nodes and devices. Data redundancy: There might be possibilities of high redundancy in the sensor data. It unnecessarily spends much precious energy. The solutions can be in the form of data fusion and data aggregation. These techniques help to maintain robustness while decreasing redundancy in the data. But it also introduces -latency and complicates QoS design. Heterogeneous traffic types: We have already mentioned this in previous section. Applications might need access to heterogeneous data collected by different types of sensors with different sampling rates. This heterogeneous environment in WBAN makes QoS support more complex and challenging. Packet criticality: Some data in WBAN are most times very critical and it needs real time attentions. QoS mechanisms may be required to differentiate packet importance and set up a priority structure. Unbalanced traffic: Data may flow from many sensor devices (many patients in a hospital along with outside people) to small

number of sinks. Hence it is argued that QoS mechanisms should be designed for an unbalanced QoS-constrained traffic. Multiple sinks: WBAN applications prefer central coordinator which acts as the sink too. It is not usual to have multiple sinks. But it may happen that due to different nature of sensors for different types of data in WBAN, multiple sinks are used. It arises from the need of different requirements on the network. For example, one sink may ask data from heart monitoring sensors in every minute, while another sink node may need only emergency event from heart sensors or blood pressure monitoring sensors etc. Hence it is necessary that WBAN supports different QoS levels in such cases of multiple sinks. Although we have mentioned some of the challenges and limiting factors, there might be some more factors which influences and increases the complexity of QoS support in WBAN applications. Further studies in this direction are needed.

4. Some Protocols with focus on QoS

The discussion so far shows that QoS in traditional data networks cannot be used in WBAN. There is need of specific QoS MAC and routing protocols. Some authors [18,19] have already proposed such protocols for sensor networks. But it is yet to see how effective they are in sensitive application areas of WBAN. Here we mention some comparisons of routing and MAC protocols as presented in [17]. 4.1 Some Routing protocols with focus on QoS: Sequential Assignment Routing (SAR) Multi-path and multi-speed routing protocol (MMSPEED) SPEED [18] An Energy-Aware QoS Routing Protocol -by Akkaya and Younis [19]
Table-1: Comparison of routing protocols with QoS focus [17]
Energy-awareness Low SAR SPEED MMSPEED Akkaya et al Moder ate x High Routing approach Table driven x On demand x x x QoS differentiation No Ye s x x x x

x x x

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4.2 Some MAC protocols with focus on QoS QoS-aware Medium Access Control EDF-based Access Protocol Traffic-Adaptive Medium Access Protocol (TRAMA) [15]
Table-2: Comparison of MAC protocols with QoS focus [17]
Energy-awareness MAC approach QoS differentiati on N Yes o x x x

constraints on the QoS requirements of other layers. In fact it impacts all the other layers As mentioned earlier, for any sensor networks application such as WBAN, QoS requirements can be subdivided in to two major categories- Application Specific QoS and Network QoS. But it is very difficult to analyze QoS requirements for every application. Different WBAN applications have different requirement in terms of quality. Sometimes prompt action is more important than the quality of communication and thereby compromising quality. Hence application requirements influence the QoS parameters. In network QoS we are mainly concerned how the network can deliver the QoS-constrained sensor data while efficiently utilizing network resources [7]. Here we analyze each class of applications classified by the following data delivery models- event-driven, query-driven and continuous delivery models. The following (Table-3) presents a brief comparison of each model in terms of parameters end-to-end, interactivity, delay tolerance and criticality.
Table-3: Application Requirements [7] Class End-to- End Interactivity Delay tolerance Criticality Event-driven No Yes No Yes Query-driven No Yes Query-specific Yes Continuous No No Yes Yes

Low QMAC TRAMA EDFbased

Moder ate x x

Hi gh x

Reservati on based x x

Contention based x

As we can see from Table 1 and 2, no particular protocol is able to provide all the functionalities. Hence we strongly feel that more research should be done in this direction too.

5. QoS Requirements
QoS requirements are so complex in sensor network applications that we almost need to check it in every layer of the network. Many people are trying to figure out the requirements. Authors in [4] have exclusively explored the QoS requirements in the same fashion as OSI-7 layer approach for sensor applications. We briefly present them here as followsQoS requirements for Application layer (usually specified by users): It includes system lifetime, response time, data novelty, detection probability, data reliability and data resolution QoS requirements for the Transport layer: It includes reliability, bandwidth, latency, and cost. QoS requirements for the Network layer: It includes path latency, routing maintenance, congestion probability, routing robustness and energy efficiency. QoS requirements for the Connectivity Maintenance layer: it includes network diameter, network capacity, average path cost, connectivity, robustness and connectivity maintenance QoS requirements for the Coverage Maintenance layer: It includes coverage percentage, coverage reliability, coverage robustness, coverage maintenance. QoS requirements for the MAC layer: It includes communication range, throughput, transmission reliability, and energy efficiency QoS requirements for the PHY layer: It includes physical capabilities impose resource

These all makes QoS a complex phenomenon. Hence it is important to know the trade-offs of QoS with other parameters in WBAN applications. It is also worth to mention that if not all layers then along with protocols in MAC and PHY layers, we need QoS specific protocols at least for transport layer as it includes major parameters such as reliability, bandwidth, latency and cost.

6. Open Research Issues

QoS issues are closely related with many other aspects of WBAN. Here we again want to mention a simple fact to be noted down that QoS always vary from application to application. But still there are some common problems which are applicable to major areas of wireless sensor networks. Open research issues [7] are mentioned for QoS in wireless sensor networks which we feel directly applicable to WBAN too. Some of the open research issues are as follows- simpler QoS models, QoS-aware data dissemination protocols, QoS support based on collective QoS parameters, traditional

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end-to-end energy-aware QoS support, adaptive QoS assurance algorithms, service differentiation, QoS support via a middleware layer, QoS control mechanisms, WBAN services and the integration of QoS supports. Besides these discussed open issues, it is also among important research areas to find an optimum network architecture supporting all the aspects of WBAN such as mobility of the subject wearing sensor devices and so on. It is also necessary to compare and see the various trade-offs between QoS and other aspects of WBAN such as energy consumptions, scalability, mobility and error levels.

[2]

[3]

7. Conclusion
QoS has emerged as a major concern and research area in sensor network applications such as WBAN. But still much work has to be done. We feel that there should be more QoS specific WBAN research. There is also need to have some MAC as well as routing protocols that can handle QoS in WBAN specifically so as to improve the overall functionality. We are also in favor of using some mechanism for monitoring of QoS in WBAN itself and which have not been taken up by many people yet. We want to include it in our future works. Energy efficiency, as a QoS metric, remains the major focus of research. The trade-offs of various factors should also be studied carefully. So far we have only discussed outbody wearable sensor devices in WBAN. There are also lots of scopes for working in the in-body WBAN application scenarios. We strongly feel that there are lots of areas regarding QoS in WBAN that need to be researched.

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

Acknowledgment
This research was supported by the MKE (Ministry of Knowledge Economy), Korea, under the ITRC (Information Technology Research Center) support program supervised by the IITA (Institute of Information Technology Assessment) (IITA-2008C1090-0801-0019). [8]

[9]

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