Enhancing WBAN Performance with Cluster-Based Routing Protocol Using Black Widow Optimization for Healthcare Application

D. Abdul Kareem1, 2,*, D. Rajesh1

1Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Vel Tech Rangarajan Dr.Sagunthala R&D Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai, Tamilnadu, India

2Department of Computer Science and Engineering. GRT Institute of Engineering and Technology, Chennai, Tamilnadu, India

Text Box: Abstract Research on wireless body area networks (WBAN), also known as wireless body sensor networks (WBSN), has been increasingly important in medical applications recently and is now crucial for patient monitoring. To create a dependable body area network (BAN) system, several factors need to be considered at both the software and hardware levels. One such factor is the designing and implementation of routing protocols in the network layers. Protocols for routing can detect and manage the routing paths in a network to facilitate efficient data transmission between nodes. Therefore, the routing protocol is crucial in wireless sensor networks (WSN) to provide dependable communication among the sensor nodes. Different clustering methods can be used in WBAN systems. However, these techniques often produce many cluster heads (CHs), which leads to higher energy consumption. Increased consumption of energy reduces the lifespan of WBANs and raises costs of monitoring. This research proposes a recent metaheuristic algorithm to select the optimal clusters to provide an energy-effective protocol for healthcare monitoring. This research aims to minimize the energy utilization of WBANs by choosing the most suitable CHs based on the BWO. The proposed BWO-based routing protocol demonstrates superior performance in WBANs based on energy consumption, packet loss, packet delivery ratio, network lifetime, end-to-end delay, and throughput. It optimizes energy consumption by effectively selecting CHs and routing paths, leading to balanced energy usage and prolonged network operation. The BWO model significantly reduces end-to-end delay by ensuring data packets follow the shortest and least congested routes, which is significant for real-time health monitoring. It achieves a high packet delivery ratio, typically between 95% and 98%, indicating reliable data transmission, while maintaining a low packet loss rate, generally between 1% and 5%. Additionally, the BWO-based routing protocol extends network lifetime by preventing early node depletion and enhances network throughput by reducing congestion and packet collisions, thereby supporting continuous and robust health data monitoring. Emails: abdulkareem.d@grt.edu.in; drrajeshd@veltech.edu.in

 

Received: January 29, 2024 Revised: April 17, 2024 Accepted: June 24, 2024

Keywords: WSN; WBAN; WBSN; BWO; Cluster-Based Routing; Cluster Head Selection; Healthcare Application