Packet size optimization for congestion control in pervasive healthcare monitoring

The emergence of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have introduced a new research area known as Body Sensor Networks (BSNs) that hold great promises to facilitate various pervasive monitoring services ranging from home automation, to remote healthcare and military surveillance. The performance of this resource-constrained network, is however, highly restricted by its error-prone characteristic, resulting in a critical issue of congested network. This paper proposed a prospective solution to alleviate congestion problem in BSNs by determining an appropriate, optimal packet size that can facilitate minimum retransmission attempts with optimum overhead in various error conditions. Although different approaches have been realized in literature, none has used this technique to address congestion issue specifically in BSNs. Uniquely different from existing approaches for traditional wireless networks, this study purposely targeted at BSNs, dealing with its distinctive characteristics and natures. Performance comparisons and analysis on the impact of packet size in various Bit Error Rates (BERs) demonstrate a remarkable performance improvement.