Quality of Service Provisioning in Biosensor Networks

Biosensor networks are wireless networks consisting of tiny biological sensors (biosensors, for short) that can be implanted inside the body of human and animal subjects. Biosensors can measure various biological processes that occur inside the body of the subject under test. Applications of biosensor networks include automated drug delivery, heart beat rate monitoring, and temperature sensing. Since biosensor networks employ wireless transmission, heat is generated in the tissues surrounding the implanted biosensors. Human and animal tissues are very sensitive to temperature increase. Therefore, the generated heat is mitigated by the natural thermoregulatory system. However, excessive transmissions can cause a significant increase in temperature and thus tissue damage. Hence, there is a need for a mechanism to control the rate of wireless transmissions. Of course, controlling the rate of wireless transmissions will lead to Quality-of-Service (QoS) issues like the required minimum delay and throughput. In this paper, we are going to investigate the above issues using the framework of Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). We are going to develop several MDP models that will enable us to study the different trade-offs involved in QoS provisioning in biosensor networks. The optimal policies computed using the proposed MDP models are compared with greedy policies to show their vigilant behavior and viable performance.

@article{Osais2016,
  title     = {Quality of Service Provisioning in Biosensor Networks},
  journal   = {International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications},
  volume    = {7},
  number    = {7},
  year      = {2016},
  publisher = {The Science and Information Organization},
  author    = {Yahya Osais and Muhammad Butt},
  doi       = {10.14569/IJACSA.2016.070774},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.14569/IJACSA.2016.070774}
}