Intelligent Hybrid Heuristic-Metaheuristic Algorithm for Lifetime Extension in Wireless Body Area Networks

Wireless body area network (WBAN) is a type of wireless communication network, which consists of tiny bio-sensor nodes attached to or implanted in the human body, to continuously monitor the patient by medical staff. Energy efficient routing in WBANs is of utmost importance, as bio-sensors are highly resource-constrained. Although many heuristic- and metaheuristic-based routing protocols have been proposed for WBANs, they suffer from some drawbacks: low solution quality of heuristics and low speed of metaheuristics in online routing. To overcome these drawbacks and simultaneously benefit from the advantage of both techniques, we present an ensemble heuristic-metaheuristic protocol (called CHM) as an adjustable routing solution for WBANs. In CHM, a multi-criteria heuristic based on the residual energy, distance to sink, path loss, and history of becoming a relay node, is used to select proper cluster heads. Furthermore, a metaheuristic algorithm using a genetic algorithm is applied to automatically tune the heuristic protocol. Simulation results in MATLAB using IEEE 802.15.6 on different WBANs demonstrate the performance of the introduced CHM protocol when compared with the existing routing protocols in terms of prolonging the application-specific network lifetime definition.