Energy-efficient beacon listening scheme for periodic vital signal monitoring

A new energy-efficient beacon listening scheme with a medium access control protocol is proposed for periodic vital signal monitoring in a wireless body area network system. The conventional system receives every beacon frame to adjust the protocol context; however, the proposed scheme receives only the necessary beacon frames. As a result, power consumption decreases by reducing idle listening times. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme reduces power consumption of the beacon mode to almost that of the non-beacon mode. Compared with the normal beacon mode, it reduces the power consumption by 25% when the traffic model is assumed to be electrocardiogram (ECG). This is suitable for devices monitoring periodic data such as an ECG application.