Abstract

A dual-radio solution for wireless body area networks (WBANs) is proposed in this paper. Solution is based on the usage of wake-up receiver (WUR) and impulse radio ultra wideband (IR-UWB) technique. In the proposition, the data to the hub is transmitted using IR-UWB and the control messages back to a node are received using WUR. Energy efficiency model has been developed to compare proposed solution’s performance to a conventional duty-cycling based single radio solution. WUR design includes trade-offs between data rate, sensitivity and power consumption that are also explored in this work. Results show that the proposed solution can improve energy efficiency in WBANs which have asymmetric traffic between the sensor nodes and hub in the uplink and downlink direction.