Kefa G. Mkongwa

Bio: Kefa G. Mkongwa is an academic researcher from Harbin Engineering University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Throughput & Network packet. The author has an hindex of 3, co-authored 7 publications receiving 28 citations.

Performance issues in wireless body area networks for the healthcare application: a survey and future prospects

Abstract: This study presents a survey of the current issues, application areas, findings, and performance challenges in wireless body area networks (WBAN). The survey discusses selected areas in WBAN signal processing, network reliability, spectrum management, security, and WBAN integration with other technologies for highly efficient future healthcare applications. The foundation of the study bases on the recent growing advances in microelectronic technology and commercialization, which ease device availability, miniaturization, and communication. The survey considers a systemic review conducted using reports, standard documents, and peer-reviewed articles. Based on the comprehensive review, we find WBANs faces several operational, standardization, and security issues, affecting performance and maintenance of user safety and privacy. We envision the increasing dependency of future healthcare on WBAN for medical and non-medical applications due to internet connectivity advances. In this view, despite the WBAN advantages in remote health monitoring, further studies need to be conducted for performance optimization. Therefore we finalize our study by proposing various current and future research directions and open issues in WBAN’s performance enhancement.

Link Reliability and Performance Optimization in Wireless Body Area Networks

Abstract: Wireless body area networks (WBAN) require long life links and energy efficient system. Besides the increasing commercialization of WBAN, health monitoring applications calls for enhanced quality of service (QoS). The establishment of the reliable and energy efficient link is crucial to support the improvement of the WBAN performance parameters. In this article, we propose a cross-layer routing mechanism for WBAN quality of service enhancement. The protocol uses a cost function, which linearly combines node energy ratio, link reliability, and specific absorption rate functions. The proposed algorithm initially maximizes network lifetime longevity by reducing node energy consumption with nearly reasonable throughput and the packet delivery ratio whereas the enhancement of the QoS focused on improving network throughput and the packet delivery success rate for WBAN applications. The algorithm is implemented in two stages, firstly by designing the energy efficient and reliable link routing policy in the network layer and secondly the adjustment of the contention window for QoS performance enhancement in the data link layer using IEEE 802.11 medium access control (MAC) protocol. We conduct parametric modeling of the cost function to analyze network performance in different parametric combinations and contention window adjustments. Simulation results show the proposed protocol improves network performance indicators such as energy efficiency, lifetime longevity maximization, throughput, and packet success delivery ratio.

A simple cross-layer mechanism for congestion control and performance enhancement in a localized multiple wireless body area networks

Abstract: Commercialization of the wireless body area network (WBAN) envisions future new normal for WBAN devices coexistence in a localized area. The coexistence may allow devices to freely change positions, associate, or dissociate with the neighbours as users interact. Devices’ interaction in a stationary or mobile fashion radiates heat and also competes for the limited network resources resulting to unreliable communication and other performance challenges. Besides alarming user safety, device mobility affects network performance through topology changes, which result to recursive link disconnections, energy waste, packet delay, degraded throughput, and congestion due to excessive control messaging during route repair. In this article, we propose WBAN performance optimization criteria focusing on improving energy efficiency, network throughput, and reducing the end to end delay in multiple existence schemes. Firstly, we propose an alternative routing algorithm, whose routing decision depends on a cost function considering the parameterized residue energy to node distance ratio, link energy reliability, and specific heat absorption in addition to node sequence number and hop count as fundamental route selection metrics. Secondly, we implement congestion control adaptation in the medium access control (IEEE 802.11MAC) mechanism, which improves throughput, reduces congestion, and delay. Due to link discontinuities during mobility, we demonstrate a comparative network performance to address the effect of WBAN speed at different hello intervals. The comparative analysis show, protocol implementation with a cross-layer approach outperforms the conventional protocol without MAC adaptations in terms of energy efficiency, network throughput, and a reduced end to end delay, by an average of 0.45%, 2.8%, and 13.7%, respectively.

An adaptive backoff and dynamic clear channel assessment mechanisms in IEEE 802.15.4 MAC for wireless body area networks

Abstract: The low power connectivity and short distance communication qualities of the IEEE 802.15.4 standard suits its application in wireless body (personal) area networks (WBAN). IEEE 802.15.4 protocol use carrier sense multiple access and collision avoidance (CSMA-CA) medium access control (MAC) mechanism for aperiodic data communication; however, it faces performance degradation with a gradual increase in the number of network devices. Performance challenges arise due to; several heterogeneous and dynamic packet sources sharing limited resources during contention in a finite backoff period, association delay, and traffic channel access through clear channel assessment (CCA) algorithms. Due to such constraints, channel conditions increase packet collision and queuing delay, which raises power demand and impedes performance indicators, such as throughput, packet delivery ratio (PDR), and end to end (E2E) delay. This article proposes an alternative combination of the backoff and CCA adaptation mechanisms to improve WBAN performance characteristics in a highly dynamic environment considering network residue energy, PDR, throughput, and E2E delay. We use the Markov model to demonstrate a theoretical analysis of the proposed CSMA-CA MAC mechanism. A comparative study shows the proposed methods outperform conventional protocol in PDR, throughput, and reduced E2E delay by 13.1%, 21.44%, and 41.13%, respectively, where energy efficiency drops by 0.43%.

A Trust-Based Energy-Efficient and Reliable Communication Scheme (Trust-Based ERCS) for Remote Patient Monitoring in Wireless Body Area Networks

Abstract: Wireless Body Area Network is an emerging technology that is used primarily in the area of healthcare applications. It is a low-cost network having the capability of transportability and adaptability. It can be used in location independent and long-term remote monitoring of people without disturbing their daily activities. In a typical WBAN system, sensing devices are either implanted or etched into the human body that continuously monitors his physiological parameters or vital signs. In such a network, trusts among the stakeholders (healthcare providers, users, and medical staff, etc.) are found of high importance and regarded as the critical success factor for the reliability of information exchange among them. In remote patient monitoring, the implementation of trust and privacy preservation is crucial, as vital parameters are being communicated to remote locations. Nonetheless, its widespread use, WBAN, has severe trust and privacy risks, limiting its adaptation in healthcare applications. To address trust and privacy-related issues, reliable communication solutions are widely used in WBANs. Given the motivation, in this paper, we have proposed a trust-based communication scheme to ensure the reliability and privacy of WBAN. To ensure reliability, a cooperative communication approach is used, while for privacy preservation, a cryptography mechanism is used. The performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated using MATLAB simulator. The output results demonstrated that the proposed scheme increases service delivery ratio, reliability, and trust with reduced average delay. Furthermore, a fuzzy-logic method used for ranking benchmark schemes, that has been concluded that the proposed scheme has on top using comparative performance ranking.

EERP-DPM: Energy Efficient Routing Protocol Using Dual Prediction Model for Healthcare Using IoT.

Abstract: Healthcare is one of the most promising domains for the application of Internet of Things- (IoT-) based technologies, where patients can use wearable or implanted medical sensors to measure medical parameters anywhere and anytime. The information collected by IoT devices can then be sent to the health care professionals, and physicians allow having a real-time access to patients' data. However, besides limited batteries lifetime and computational power, there is spatio-temporal correlation, where unnecessary transmission of these redundant data has a significant impact on reducing energy consumption and reducing battery lifetime. Thus, this paper aims to propose a routing protocol to enhance energy-efficiency, which in turn prolongs the sensor lifetime. The proposed work is based on Energy Efficient Routing Protocol using Dual Prediction Model (EERP-DPM) for Healthcare using IoT, where Dual-Prediction Mechanism is used to reduce data transmission between sensor nodes and medical server if predictions match the readings or if the data are considered critical if it goes beyond the upper/lower limits of defined thresholds. The proposed system was developed and tested using MATLAB software and a hardware platform called "MySignals HW V2." Both simulation and experimental results confirm that the proposed EERP-DPM protocol has been observed to be extremely successful compared to other existing routing protocols not only in terms of energy consumption and network lifetime but also in terms of guaranteeing reliability, throughput, and end-to-end delay.

Certificateless pairing-free authentication scheme for wireless body area network in healthcare management system.

Abstract: With the current advancement in technology, the use of Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) has become popular in the healthcare management. They provide a mechanism to collect and transmit physiological data to healthcare providers in remote locations. With the need to secure healthcare data becoming a global concern, mechanisms must be put in place to ensure secure communication of physiological data collected in WBANs. This paper, presents a new authentication scheme for WBANs based on Elliptic Curve Cryptography. Sensor nodes used in WBANs are resource constraint and for that reason, the proposed scheme is both certificateless and pairing-free. We compared the efficiency of our proposed authentication scheme with other related schemes and found that our scheme had considerable efficiency in terms of communication cost and running time.

Temperature and Reliability-Aware Routing Protocol for Wireless Body Area Networks

Abstract: The Wireless Body Sensor Network (WBSN) can be envisioned as a cost-effective solution to provide monitoring and reporting services in medical and non-medical applications to improve quality of life. The dissemination of patient data in a timely and reliable manner is one of the necessities of healthcare applications of WBSN. The critical data packets are highly delay-sensitive. However, these packets reaching the destination beyond timelines undermine the benefit of such networks. To provide real-time health monitoring an adequate link (in terms of reliability, stability, and QoS) has to be maintained. However, the distinguishing characteristics of WBSN pose several challenges to be countered such as limited resources, transmission range, and unreliable wireless links in terms of QoS as low-power radios are sensitive to interference and noise. Consequently, some portions of the network experience a significant level of congestion thereby strain the communication links, available bandwidth, insufficient buffer space, increased number of collisions, packet losses, and transmission disruption. Therefore, importing QoS awareness in routing decisions is important to improve the performance of WBSN. This paper proposes a QoS-aware routing protocol named TLD-RP (Temperature, Link-reliable, and Delay-aware Routing Protocol) for WBSN. Most of the temperature-aware routing protocols proposed for the WBSN incorporate either single or composite routing metrics (temperature, hop count, or energy). However, optimized route discovery has been overlooked in most of the previous studies on QoS requirements such as link reliability, stability, and link delay. Keeping in view these limitations, the proposed TLD-RP makes use of a multi-facet composite routing metric by carefully considering the critical QoS requirements for the WBAN. The design of the proposed TLD-RP scheme centers on the link’s reliability, path delay, and link’s asymmetric property. These design factors enable the proposed TLD-RP scheme to make more informed decisions regarding dynamic channel conditions. The optimized links satisfying the QoS requirements are selected for routing data packets. The simulation results confirm the effectiveness and efficacy of the proposed TLD-RP strategy by improving WBSN performance along with throughput, packet delivery, network overhead, and link stability.

AI-driven adaptive reliable and sustainable approach for internet of things enabled healthcare system.

Abstract: Artificial Intelligence (AI) driven adaptive techniques are viable to optimize the resources in the Internet of Things (IoT) enabled wearable healthcare devices. Due to the miniature size and ability of wireless data transfer, Body Sensor Networks (BSNs) have become the center of attention in current medical media technologies. For a long-term and reliable healthcare system, high energy efficiency, transmission reliability, and longer battery lifetime of wearable sensors devices are required. There is a dire need for empowering sensor-based wearable techniques in BSNs from every aspect i.e., data collection, healthcare monitoring, and diagnosis. The consideration of protocol layers, data routing, and energy optimization strategies improves the efficiency of healthcare delivery. Hence, this work presents some key contributions. Firstly, it proposes a novel avant-garde framework to simultaneously optimize the energy efficiency, battery lifetime, and reliability for smart and connected healthcare. Secondly, in this study, an Adaptive Transmission Data Rate (ATDR) mechanism is proposed, which works on the average constant energy consumption by varying the active time of the sensor node to optimize the energy over the dynamic wireless channel. Moreover, a Self-Adaptive Routing Algorithm (SARA) is developed to adopt a dynamic source routing mechanism with an energy-efficient and shortest possible path, unlike the conventional routing methods. Lastly, real-time datasets are adopted for intensive experimental setup for revealing pervasive and cost-effective healthcare through wearable devices. It is observed and analysed that proposed algorithms outperform in terms of high energy efficiency, better reliability, and longer battery lifetime of portable devices.