• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.587-594
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• 2012

IEEE 802.15.6 standard technology is proposed for low-power wireless communication in, on and around body, where vital signs such as pulse, blood pressure, ECG, and EEG signals are transmitted as a type of data packet. Especially, these vital signs should be delivered in real time, so that the latency from slave node to hub node can be one of the pivotal performance requirements. However, in the case of IEEE 802.15.6 technology data retransmission caused by transmission failure can be done in the next superframe. In order to overcome this limitation, we propose an adaptive polling algorithm for IEEE 802.15.6 technology. The proposing algorithm makes the hub to look for an appropriate time period in order to make data retransmission within the superframe. Through the performance evaluation, the proposing algorithm achieves a 61% and a 73% latency reduction compared to those of IEEE 802.15.6 technology in the environment of 70% traffic offered load with 10ms and 100ms superframe period. In addition, the proposing algorithm prevents bursty traffic transmission condition caused by mixing retransmission traffic with the traffic reserved for transmission. Through the proposing adaptive polling algorithm, it will be possible to transmit time-sensitive vital signs without severe traffic delay.