EE-TAR: Energy Efficient and Thermal Aware Routing Protocol for Software Defined Wireless Body Area Networks

Software Defined Networking (SDN) has gained tremendous prominence in replacing the conventional network by providing versatile and dynamic network management. Recent developments in wireless technology and the rising cost of healthcare expenditures have drawn people’s interest towards smart healthcare systems which are reliable and efficient in terms of cost and performance. In this paper, we integrated two novel technologies together and proposed “Energy Efficient and Thermal Aware Routing Protocol for Software Defined Wireless Body Area Networks” (EE-TAR). This protocol provides a Cost Function (CF) metric based on three quantities, transmission distance, temperature, and residual energy. It uses the least cost path algorithm for multihop routing and also uses thermal model to mitigate the problems caused by temperature rise. Simulation results show better performance in terms of throughput, number of dead nodes, residual energy and path loss.