Wisetop - A Multimode Mac Protocol For Wireless Implanted Devices

A single Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol is usually suboptimal in terms of energy consumption and network performance. When dealing with a wireless low-power network in which the network traffic alternates between no traffic and high traffic a compromise must be accepted. Using a low power protocol may not guarantee the performance needed when the traffic increases above a given threshold; using a high-performance protocol may waste precious energy when the traffic in the network is very low. This paper presents WiseTOP, a multimode MAC protocol, which adapts to strongly varying network traffic conditions. Although, WiseTOP has been initially designed for an arm prosthesis, this approach is relevant in other scenarios, typically duty-cycled, such as sensor networking in cars, planes, drones, etc. In addition, WiseTOP aims at providing a good protection against 2.4GHz external interferences, by adopting a channel-hopping scheme. Our results show that switching from one protocol to the other decreases the energy consumption and increases the communication performance, measured as correctly delivered packets and latency.