www.astesj.com 783 The Effects of Transmission Power and Modulation Schemes on the Performance of WBANs in on-Body Medical Applications Marwa Boumaiz *,1 , Mohammed El Ghazi 1 , Mohammed Fattah 2 , Anas Bouayad 1 , Moulhime El bekkali 1 1 LIASSE-ENSA, Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah University, Fes, 30050, Morocco 2 EST, Moulay Ismail University, Meknes,50050, Morocco A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T Article history: Received:13 July, 2020 Accepted:02 August, 2020 Online: 28 August, 2020 Wireless Body Area Networks support the operation within multiple frequency bands. Thus, they can be integrated in several applications, one of which is on-body medical monitoring applications, as concerned in this paper. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to present the impact of transmission power and both of Differential Binary Phase Shift Keying and Differential Quadrature Phase Shift Keying modulation schemes, on the performance of a WBAN model based on the IEEE 802.15.6 2.4 GHz narrow-band, dedicated to on-body medical applications. This involves identifying the modulation scheme(s) and transmission power level(s) to be adopted for these applications, that can be classified into three types depending on their data rate (low, medium and high data rate medical applications), in order to meet Packet Loss Rate and latency requirements. The numerical study has confirmed that the adoption of DBPSK modulation and low transmission powers provides good performance for low data rate monitoring applications. At medium data rates, a relatively increased transmit power was required. However, at high data rates, DQPSK modulation with a 0 dBm transmission power seemed to be the right choice to be made in terms of the mentioned performance indicators. Keywords: Wireless Body Area Networks IEEE 802.15.6 On-body medical applications Packet Loss Rate Throughput Latency 1. Introduction The actual improved life expectancy all over the world has led to an increased rate of population ageing [1], which may overburden conventional healthcare infrastructures and consequently increase healthcare costs. In addition, each year millions of people die due to late diagnosis of certain fatal diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases, Parkinson’s disease and many others [1]. These losses could have been largely avoided if those illnesses were detected in time. The massive growth of electronic systems [2] resulted in the appearance of small biosensors operating at the human body scale as Wireless Body Area Networks. When used in healthcare systems, WBANs can simplify the monitoring of simple parameters such as body temperature, blood pressure, ECG, etc., or be integrated in more complicated processes like changing programs for implantable pacemakers and defibrillators [3], retrieving biokinetic information [4–6], or adjusting body limbs movements when damaged by car accidents, for example. In medical applications [7], WBANs are considered to be the key solution to prevent a variety of cardiovascular diseases [8–9], such as myocardial infarction, which are often related to intermittent rather than permanent anomalies s[10]. In addition, as the number of diabetic people worldwide is expected to reach 380 million by 2025, WBANs can also be adopted in diabetes monitoring [11–12]. Therefore, it will be necessary to integrate medical monitoring systems based on WBANs in our day to day life, in order to correctly and timely dose medicines, and thus reduce the risk of many complications. Similarly, miniaturized sensors can further be used to detect cancer cells, allowing the doctor to first diagnose tumors without the need for a biopsy [10]. As for people suffering from asthma, WBANs may also ensure the detection of allergenic agents in the environment surrounding the patient. In [13] for example, The authors proposed an alert system triggered by the detection of an environment the patient is allergic ASTESJ ISSN: 2415-6698 * Corresponding Author: Marwa Boumaiz, marwaboumaiz@gmail.com Advances in Science, Technology and Engineering Systems Journal Vol. 5, No. 4, 783-794 (2020) www.astesj.com Special Issue on Innovative Research in Applied Science, Engineering and Technology https://dx.doi.org/10.25046/aj050493