Novel MAC protocol for handling correlation and dynamics of medical traffic in WBANs

In Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs), it is crucial to ensure reliable and timely delivery of gathered data, despite their intrinsic challenges related to limited resources at the sensor level. In fact, in the medical context, most real-time and life-critical applications are both delay-sensitive and loss-sensitive; the loss or corruption packets carrying critical data due to unreliable wireless networks could have severe consequences. In this regard, the concept of context awareness can be exploited; the more an application acquires additional information about users, sensors, and their context, the better it can adapt its functional behavior to improve its performance of delay, throughput and packet loss.