International Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering (IJECE) Vol. 14, No. 3, June 2024, pp. 2762~2770 ISSN: 2088-8708, DOI: 10.11591/ijece.v14i3.pp2762-2770  2762 Journal homepage: http://ijece.iaescore.com Medium access control protocol based on time division multiple access scheme for wireless body area network Wan Haszerila Wan Hassan 1,2 , Darmawaty Mohd Ali 1 , Juwita Mohd Sultan 2 , Murizah Kassim 3 1 Wireless Communication Technology Group, School of Electrical Engineering, College of Engineering, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam, Malaysia 2 Fakulti Teknologi dan Kejuruteraan Elektronik dan Komputer, Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, Melaka, Malaysia 3 Institute for Big Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam, Malaysia Article Info ABSTRACT Article history: Received Jan 30, 2024 Revised Feb 22, 2024 Accepted Feb 25, 2024 In recent years, the demand for wireless body area network (WBAN) technology has increased, driven by advancements in medical and healthcare applications. WBAN consists of small, low-power, and heterogeneous sensor devices attached inside or outside the body for continuous health monitoring. Medium access control (MAC) is pivotal in addressing WBAN challenges by ensuring reliability and energy efficiency under a dynamic environment caused by body movement. Therefore, to tackle these challenges, this paper presents a MAC protocol based on time division multiple access (TDMA) to enhance the WBAN performance. The proposed TDMA-MAC protocol employs a one-periodic scheduled-based access method to provide reliable data transmission while satisfying the WBAN requirements. The proposed protocol is compared to the IEEE 802.15.6 MAC, enhanced packet scheduling algorithm MAC (EPSA-MAC), and concurrent MAC (C-MAC) protocols based on the performance metrics of packet delivery ratio (PDR), network throughput, energy consumption, and average delay. The simulation results show that the TDMA-MAC protocol outperforms its competitors as it could achieve up to 98% PDR, 30% enhanced throughput, 30% energy optimization, and 20% improvement in average delay. Keywords: Energy efficiency Healthcare applications Reliability Scheduled-based Wireless body area network This is an open access article under the CC BY-SA license. Corresponding Author: Darmawaty Mohd Ali Wireless Communication Technology Group, School of Electrical Engineering, College of Engineering, Universiti Teknologi MARA 40450 Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia Email: darma504@uitm.edu.my 1. INTRODUCTION The wireless body area network (WBAN) has allowed the development of low-cost e-healthcare and well-being applications [1], [2]. In contrast to the wireless sensor network (WSN), the WBAN introduces new challenges and features, replacing wired and complex healthcare equipment, thereby allowing continuous monitoring of crucial data while limiting the user's mobility [3]–[5]. The performance of WBAN relies on the design of medium access control (MAC) protocols [6], [7]. In WBAN communication, MAC protocols are categorized into contention-based, scheduled-based, and hybrid-based access methods [8], [9]. The carrier-sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) represents a contention-based scheme, whereas time division multiple access (TDMA) is adopted as a scheduled-based scheme [10]. Meanwhile, the hybrid-based combines a schedule-based scheme with a contention-based scheme to leverage the advantages of both techniques [11], [12]. A scheduled-based scheme outperforms a contention-based