Data Dissemination Strategies for Emerging Wireless Body-to-Body Networks based Internet of Humans

Abstract: With the recent advent of Internet of Humans (IoH), wireless body-to-body networks (WBBNs) are emerging as the fundamental part of this new paradigm. In particular with reference to newly emerging applications, the research trends on data routing and dissemination strategies have gained a great interest in WBBN. In this paper, we present the performance evaluation of the clustered and distributed data dissemination approaches in tactical WBBN. We used a realistic radio-link and biomechanical mobility model for on-body motions, and group mobility model for WBBN to effectively realize rescue and emergency management application scenario. In this regard, we are using the newly proposed IEEE 802.15.6 standard targeted for body area networks. Extensive (IEEE 802.15.6 standard compliance) network level, packet oriented simulations are conducted in WSNet simulator. During the simulations, various payloads, frequencies (narrow-band) and modulation techniques are exploited. We based our performance evaluation on relevant metrics according to the operational requirements for tactical networks such as packet reception ratio, latency, energy consumption and hop count. The results showed a trade-offs between clustered-based and distributed-based dissemination approaches. With regards to packet delay, distributed approach provided the best performance. However, in terms of average packet reception ratio (PRR), clustered-based approach achieves up to 97% reception and remained the best strategy. Whereas, the results of the hop count and energy consumption are almost comparable in both schemes.