Multi-relay cooperative body surface communications in ultra-wideband body area networks

Ultra-wideband (UWB)-based body area networks (BAN) are envisioned to provide health care to patients on the move, and monitor patients' health. Since UWB uses transmit power lower than 1 mW, the link performance degrades due to absorption in body tissues and channel impairments. In BAN, multiple sensor nodes present between the transmitter and the receiver can act as relays to improve the link quality, thereby improving the energy efficiency and reliability. In this paper, we suggest a novel cooperative communications scenario for BAN and present a comparative bit error rate performance analysis of amplify forward and decode forward strategies using multiple relays. A power performance analysis, and validation of performance by transmitting electrocardiogram signals and magnetic resonance images, and recording the bit error rates, root mean square error and peak signal to noise ratio proves that proposed methods provide better performance compared to direct transmission. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.