Toward a Modeling Language Prototype for Modeling the Behavior of

Wireless Body Area Networks Communication Protocols

Bethaina Touijer

LRIT, Faculty of Sciences, Mohammed V University in Rabat, Morocco

Keywords:

Wireless Body Area Network, Medium Access Control, Model-Driven Engineering, Domain-Speciﬁc

Modeling Language, UPPAAL-SMC, ADOxx.

Abstract:

Modeling and evaluating the behavior of the medium access control (MAC) protocols of wireless body area

networks (WBANs) through the model-checker toolset UPPAAL-SMC necessitate a certain level of expertise.

The thing that is not available for many MAC protocol designers. To facilitate the use of UPPAAL-SMC,

we propose to deﬁne a model-driven engineering (MDE) approach that uses a modeling method (MM) as a

start and the UPPAAL-SMC as a target and back. In this paper, we use the ADOxx platform to deﬁne the

domain-speciﬁc modeling language (DSML) of WBAN that is presented through the name WBAN modeling

language (WBAN-ML) to model the behavior of the WBANs MAC protocols. The prototype implementation

result of the WBAN-ML is presented in this paper.

1 MOTIVATION

Throughout the last years, the statistics (Latr

e et al.,

2011; Chen et al., 2011; Movassaghi et al., 2014) have

shown that many people die because of the late diag-

nosis of chronic and fatal diseases, such as cancer,

cardiovascular, asthma, and diabetes. While in recent

times, the development of technologies, such as mi-

croelectronics miniaturization, sensors, and wireless

networks led to the emergence of wireless body area

networks (WBANs) as a solution.

The WBAN (Latr

e et al., 2011; Chen et al., 2011;

Movassaghi et al., 2014) is composed of bio-medical

sensors nodes that can be worn on or placed in the hu-

man body to measure certain physiological parame-

ters of the human body, such as temperature and pres-

sure. These sensors nodes must wirelessly send their

data to a control and monitoring device carried on the

body. This device then delivers its data via a cellular

or Internet network to an emergency center or a doctor

room on the basis of which an action can be taken.

WBANs (Latr

e et al., 2011; Chen et al., 2011;

Movassaghi et al., 2014) have enormous potential

to revolutionize the present and the future of health

care services, they provide a proactive diagnosis of

many deadly diseases, as well as remote and real-

time monitoring. On the other hand, WBANs im-

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8181-2526

pose several challenges to the medium access con-

trol (MAC) protocols design concerning the energy-

efﬁciency, quality-of-service, priority, scalability, re-

liability, and security. The importance of WBAN en-

couraged the researchers to propose new MAC pro-

tocols in order to satisfy the WBAN requirements,

and then, evaluate the performance of these proposed

MAC protocols.

The WBAN is considered as a stochastic envi-

ronment, where the prediction of the time when the

physiological parameters change their values is non-

deterministic. The problem is how to model and

evaluate the behavior of the MAC protocols under

the stochastic nature of the WBAN. As a solution,

we used the statistical model-checking (SMC) toolset

UPPAAL-SMC (David et al., 2015). This toolset can

provide a stochastic interpretation of the stochastic

behavior of complex and real-time systems, such as

WBANs.

Modeling and evaluating the behavior of MAC

protocols through the stochastic timed automata

(STA) and the metric interval temporal logic (MITL)

speciﬁcations adopted by UPPAAL-SMC necessitate

a certain level of expertise. The thing that is not avail-

able for many MAC protocol designers. To facili-

tate the use of UPPAAL-SMC powerful analysis al-

gorithms, we propose to deﬁne a model-driven engi-

neering (MDE) approach that uses a modeling method

as a start and the UPPAAL-SMC as a target and back.

672

Touijer, B.

Toward a Modeling Language Prototype for Modeling the Behavior of Wireless Body Area Networks Communication Protocols.

DOI: 10.5220/0011992700003464

In Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering (ENASE 2023), pages 672-675

ISBN: 978-989-758-647-7; ISSN: 2184-4895

 2023 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. Under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Figure 1: The WBAN-MDE global structure.

The stakeholders of this MDE are the WBAN com-

munications protocols designers and researchers for

the purpose of modeling, simulating, and verifying

the behavior of the WBAN communication protocols,

especially, MAC protocols as illustrated in Figure 1.

2 PROPOSITION

Our contribution aims to deﬁne an MDE approach

that uses the ADOxx platform as a start and

the UPPAAL-SMC toolset as a target. To real-

ize this approach, we should deﬁne, at ﬁrst, our

modeling method in ADOxx through the Meta-

models of our domain-speciﬁc modeling language

(DSML), domain-speciﬁc query language (DSQL),

and domain-speciﬁc representation (DSR): 1) we cre-

ate the DSML Meta-models to model the behavior of

the MAC protocols. 2) We specify the DSQL Meta-

models to check the MAC protocols properties. 3)

We create the DSR Meta-models to express the anal-

ysis results in an understandable way for the MAC

protocols designers. Then, we should introduce the

Meta-models of UPPAAL-SMC’s STA, Queries, and

Traces. Finally, we should model the transformations

from the ADOxx models to UPPAAL-SMC models

and back. The steps involving the construction of our

approach are the follows:

• Step 1: Creation of the Meta-models of the DSML

for modeling the behavior of the MAC protocols.

• Step 2: Introduction of the Meta-models of the

UPPAAL-SMC’s STA.

• Step 3: Deﬁnition of the transformation rules

from the DSML to UPPAAL-SMC’s STA us-

ing the extensible stylesheet language transforma-

tions (XSLT).

• Step 4: Speciﬁcation of the Meta-models of the

DSQL to check the MAC protocol properties.

• Step 5: Introduction of the Meta-models of the

UPPAAL-SMC Queries.

• Step 6: Deﬁnition of the transformation rules

from the DSQL to UPPAAL-SMC Queries using

a transformation method.

• Step 7: Introduction of the Meta-models of the

UPPAAL-SMC Traces that presents the results of

the model checking process. This latter checks if

the stochastic timed automata model satisﬁes the

property speciﬁed by the Query.

• Step 8: Creation of the Meta-models of the DSR

to express the analysis results in an understand-

able way by the MAC protocols designers.

• Step 9: Deﬁnition of the transformation rules

from the UPPAAL-SMC Traces models to DSR

using a transformation method.

ADOxx Meta modeling platform (Karagiannis

et al., 2016) is an open-source experimentation en-

vironment for researchers and practitioners to realize

individual Meta-models and model processing func-

tionalities for domain-speciﬁc conceptual modeling

methods as modeling tools. The Meta-model (Kelly

and Tolvanen, 2008) is considered as a speciﬁcation

language-the word “meta” is used because the spec-

iﬁcation language is one level higher than the usual

models. A Meta-model is deﬁned as a conceptual

model of a modeling language. It describes the con-

cepts of a language, their properties, the legal con-

nections between language elements, model hierarchy

structures, and model correctness rules. The Meta-

model is not only important in deﬁning languages

but also it is advantageous in systematizing and for-

malizing weakly deﬁned languages, providing a more

Toward a Modeling Language Prototype for Modeling the Behavior of Wireless Body Area Networks Communication Protocols

673

“objective” approach to analyzing and comparing lan-

guages and examining linkages between modeling

languages and programming languages. The Meta-

model is also successfully used in building modeling

tools, interfaces between tools (e.g., CDIF, XML),

and repository deﬁnitions. According to (Fill and

Karagiannis, 2013; Karagiannis, 2015; Karagian-

nis et al., 2016), the Conceptualization of Modeling

Methods is a process of realizing a Modeling Method.

This process is divided into ﬁve phases forming a life-

cycle (or more speciﬁc, the conceptualization Lifecy-

cle). These phases are deﬁned as follows:

• Step 1: The Creation phase uses techniques of

knowledge acquisition and requirements elicita-

tion in order to obtain modeling language require-

ments and the modeling functionality require-

ments.

• Step 2: The Design phase produces speciﬁcations

for the Meta-model, the language grammar, and

the recommended graphical representation and

functionality.

• Step 3: The Formalization phase ensures that the

outcome of the previous phase has no ambigu-

ity, either with the purpose of sharing speciﬁca-

tion within a community or in preparation for a

platform-speciﬁc implementation.

• Step 4: The Development phase will produce a

modeling prototype or proof of concept on the tar-

geted Meta-modeling platform.

• Step 5: The Deployment/Validation phase deals

with packaging and installing the modeling proof

of concept and analyzing its user experience and

the conformance to modeling requirements.

Based on the conceptualization phases, we start

realizing our modeling method. We deﬁne in the fol-

lowing the DSML of WBAN that is presented through

the name WBAN Modeling Language (WBAN-ML)

to model the behavior of the WBANs MAC protocols.

3 WBAN-ML

Our contribution aims to create a simple WBAN-ML

that can be used by the WBANs MAC protocols de-

signers and researchers to model the behavior of their

proposed WBANs MAC protocols. We propose to

use a simple ﬂowchart to model the behavior of MAC

protocols. The realization of WBAN-ML requires

Meta-models, concepts, and notations. We divide our

WBAN-ML into three models of three Meta-models

based on the ADOxx Meta-Metamodel, as depicted in

Figure 2: the WBAN model, the Node model, and the

Hub model.

The WBAN model concepts are the external en-

vironment, where the body can exist, the body, the

nodes and the hub that are placed on the body. The

notations used for the WBAN model concepts are the

same notations adopted by the WBAN community, as

depicted in Figure 3. The Meta-model of the WBAN

model is deﬁned in Figure 5.

The Node model and the Hub model have the

same behavior modeling concepts, except that the

node has three sensors concepts. The notations used

for these concepts are the same notations used for the

ordinary ﬂowchart concepts, as depicted in Figure 4.

The Meta-models of the Node and the Hub models

are deﬁned in Figures 6 and 7, respectively.

We mention that this part is under discussion and

modiﬁcation, the reason for its short description. The

Figure 8, represents the prototype implementation re-

sult of the WBAN-ML.

Figure 2: Used part of the ADOxx Meta-Meta model.

Figure 3: Concepts and notations of the WBAN model.

Figure 4: Concepts and notations of the Node and the Hub

models.

ENASE 2023 - 18th International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering

674

Figure 5: Meta-model of the WBAN model.

Figure 6: Meta-model of the Node model.

Figure 7: Meta-model of the Hub model.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This part of my thesis work was supported by the

Moroccan Ministry of Higher Education Scientiﬁc

Research and Professional Training and the CNRST

under the project “R

eseaux de capteurs sans ﬁl

biom

edicaux” [grant number PPR/2015/43]. And, it

was achieved during my research visit to the OMi-

LAB laboratory at the University of Vienna, Faculty

for Computer Science, Department of Knowledge En-

gineering.

Figure 8: Prototype of the WBAN-ML.

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