Fuzzy-Based Dynamic Time Slot Allocation forWireless Body Area Networks

With the advancement in networking, information and communication technologies,wireless body area networks (WBANs) are becoming more popular in the field of medical andnon-medical applications. Real-time patient monitoring applications generate periodic data in a shorttime period. In the case of life-critical applications, the data may be bursty. Hence the system needsa reliable energy efficient communication technique which has a limited delay. In such cases thefixed time slot assignment in medium access control standards results in low system performance.This paper deals with a dynamic time slot allocation scheme in a fog-assisted network for a real-timeremote patient monitoring system. Fog computing is an extended version of the cloud computingparadigm, which is suitable for reliable, delay-sensitive life-critical applications. In addition, toenhance the performance of the network, an energy-efficient minimum cost parent selection algorithmhas been proposed for routing data packets. The dynamic time slot allocation uses fuzzy logic withinput variables as energy ratio, buffer ratio, and packet arrival rate. Dynamic slot allocation eliminatesthe time slot wastage, excess delay in the network and attributes a high level of reliability to thenetwork with maximum channel utilization. The efficacy of the proposed scheme is proved in termsof packet delivery ratio, average end to end delay, and average energy consumption when comparedwith the conventional IEEE 802.15.4 standard and the tele-medicine protocol.