  The rapid development of medical sensors has increased the interest in
Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) applications where physiological data from
the human body and its environment is gathered, monitored, and analyzed to take
the proper measures. In WBANs, it is essential to design MAC protocols that
ensure adequate Quality of Service (QoS) such as low delay and high
scalability. This paper investigates Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols used
in WBAN, and compares their performance in a high traffic environment. Such
scenario can be induced in case of emergency for example, where physiological
data collected from all sensors on human body should be sent simultaneously to
take appropriate action. This study can also be extended to cover collaborative
WBAN systems where information from different bodies is sent simultaneously
leading to high traffic. OPNET simulations are performed to compare the delay
and scalability performance of the different MAC protocols under the same
experimental conditions and to draw conclusions about the best protocol to be
used in a high traffic environment.
