Context Aware Power Management Enhanced by Radio Wake Up in Body Area Networks

Abstract

Wireless body area networks (WBANs) have the huge potential to enhance people's lives. They are already present in many application domains, for instance sport and fitness, but they are wide spreading in particular in health and rehabilitation. However, there are still challenging issues that limit their wide diffusion in real life: primarily, the limited lifetime due to the batteries that usually supply the devices. This limitation affects usability and force the data processing to be simple to match the power constraints. This work tries to address the energy limitation by enabling both efficient and complex signal-processing applications and extension of lifetime. We present a power management strategy combining an ultra-low power wake up radio with context awareness. The context aware power manager based on activity recognition decides which nodes must be activated exploiting a nano-power wake up radio and power management policies. Result shows that by using both approaches it is possible to extend battery life of sensor nodes from few hours to an entire week.