Wireless Body Area Networks: Challenges, Trends and Emerging Technologies

We provide a comprehensive review of the challenges and emerging technologies for WBANs: Wireless Body Area Networks. We describe leading applications and the tiers of the WBAN architectures, itemizing their major design areas. A succinct review of solutions, progress and possible future research in the areas of sensors, power and radio hardware components, the network stack, localization and mobility techniques, security and privacy, and of certification and standardization follows. We finally make the connection between WBANs and the fast growing research field of Cognitive Radios, which help establish efficient wireless transmissions in an increasingly crowded radio spectrum

[1]  E. Jovanov.  Wireless Technology and System Integration in Body Area Networks for m-Health Applications , 2005, 2005 IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology 27th Annual Conference.

[2]  R.L. Moses,et al.  Locating the nodes: cooperative localization in wireless sensor networks , 2005, IEEE Signal Processing Magazine.

[3]  Athanasios V. Vasilakos,et al.  Body Area Networks: A Survey , 2010, Mob. Networks Appl..

[4]  M. Ammad-uddin,et al.  A Survey of Challenges and Applications of Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) and Role of a Virtual Doctor Server in Existing Architecture , 2012, 2012 Third International Conference on Intelligent Systems Modelling and Simulation.

[5]  Cynthia Taylor,et al.  Towards a Proximal resource-based architecture to support augmented reality applications , 2010, 2010 Cloud-Mobile Convergence for Virtual Reality Workshop (CMCVR 2010) Proceedings.

[6]  Laura Galluccio,et al.  Challenges and implications of using ultrasonic communications in intra-body area networks , 2012, 2012 9th Annual Conference on Wireless On-Demand Network Systems and Services (WONS).

[7]  T.D. Abhayapala,et al.  Body Area Networks: Radio channel modelling and propagation characteristics , 2008, 2008 Australian Communications Theory Workshop.

[8]  Mohsen Sharifi,et al.  Dependability Considerations in Wireless Sensor Networks Applications , 2006, J. Networks.

[9]  Emil Jovanov,et al.  Stress monitoring using a distributed wireless intelligent sensor system. , 2003, IEEE engineering in medicine and biology magazine : the quarterly magazine of the Engineering in Medicine & Biology Society.

[10]  Kyung Sup Kwak,et al.  TDMA based directional MAC for WBAN , 2010, INC2010: 6th International Conference on Networked Computing.

[11]  Yang Xiao,et al.  LTRT: Least Total-Route Temperature Routing for Embedded Biomedical Sensor Networks , 2007, IEEE GLOBECOM 2007 - IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference.

[12]  Robert S. H. Istepanian,et al.  Internet of m-health Things “m-IoT” , 2011 .

[13]  Mark J. Buller,et al.  Combat medical informatics: present and future , 2002, AMIA.

[14]  Carmen C. Y. Poon,et al.  Wearable Medical Systems for p-Health , 2008, IEEE Reviews in Biomedical Engineering.

[15]  Kok-Kiong Yap,et al.  Network Characteristics of Urban Environments for Wireless BAN , 2007, 2007 IEEE Biomedical Circuits and Systems Conference.

[16]  Amiya Nayak,et al.  A survey on dependability in Body Area Networks , 2011, 2011 5th International Symposium on Medical Information and Communication Technology.

[17]  Paul D. Mitcheson,et al.  Energy harvesting for human wearable and implantable bio-sensors , 2010, 2010 Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology.

[18]  Ingrid Moerman,et al.  A Low-delay Protocol for Multihop Wireless Body Area Networks , 2007, 2007 Fourth Annual International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems: Networking & Services (MobiQuitous).

[19]  Laura Galluccio,et al.  Distributed MAC and rate adaptation for ultrasonically networked implantable sensors , 2013, 2013 IEEE International Conference on Sensing, Communications and Networking (SECON).

[20]  Kyung Sup Kwak,et al.  QoS Issues with Focus on Wireless Body Area Networks , 2008, 2008 Third International Conference on Convergence and Hybrid Information Technology.

[21]  Subir Kumar Sarkar,et al.  Issues in Wireless Sensor Networks , 2008 .

[22]  Geert Van der Plas,et al.  Ultra-wide-band transmitter for low-power wireless body area networks: design and evaluation , 2005, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers.

[23]  Eryk Dutkiewicz,et al.  Medical Body Area Networks: Opportunities, challenges and practices , 2011, 2011 11th International Symposium on Communications & Information Technologies (ISCIT).

[24]  Jong-Tae Park,et al.  Energy-efficient MAC protocols for wireless body area networks: Survey , 2010, International Congress on Ultra Modern Telecommunications and Control Systems.

[25]  Mehul Motani,et al.  Inter-User Interference in Body Sensor Networks: Preliminary Investigation and an Infrastructure-Based Solution , 2009, 2009 Sixth International Workshop on Wearable and Implantable Body Sensor Networks.

[26]  Yuan-Ting Zhang,et al.  Guest Editorial Introduction to the Special Section: 4G Health - The Long-Term Evolution of m-Health , 2012, IEEE Trans. Inf. Technol. Biomed..

[27]  Ingrid Moerman,et al.  The Wireless Autonomous Spanning tree Protocol for Multihop Wireless Body Area Networks , 2006, 2006 Third Annual International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems: Networking & Services.

[28]  Mauro Mongiardo,et al.  Networks methods for wireless resonant energy links (WREL) computations , 2009, 2009 International Conference on Electromagnetics in Advanced Applications.

[29]  Stefano Basagni,et al.  Wireless Sensor Networks with Energy Harvesting , 2013, Mobile Ad Hoc Networking.

[30]  Benton H. Calhoun,et al.  Body Area Sensor Networks: Challenges and Opportunities , 2009, Computer.

[31]  Christopher Chiu,et al.  Intelligent health care — A Motion Analysis system for health practitioners , 2010, 2010 Sixth International Conference on Intelligent Sensors, Sensor Networks and Information Processing.

[32]  Dusit Niyato,et al.  A cognitive radio system for e-health applications in a hospital environment , 2010, IEEE Wireless Communications.

[33]  M. Soljačić,et al.  Wireless Power Transfer via Strongly Coupled Magnetic Resonances , 2007, Science.

[34]  Francesco Chiti,et al.  An integrated communications framework for context aware continuous monitoring with body sensor networks , 2009, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications.

[35]  Matthias Hollick,et al.  A survey on dependable routing in sensor networks, ad hoc networks, and cellular networks , 2004 .

[36]  Zamora,et al.  Electronic textiles: a platform for pervasive computing , 2003, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[37]  R. Prasad,et al.  FM-UWB for radar and communications in medical applications , 2008, 2008 First International Symposium on Applied Sciences on Biomedical and Communication Technologies.

[38]  David Evans,et al.  Localization for mobile sensor networks , 2004, MobiCom '04.

[39]  G. Troster,et al.  UWB for noninvasive wireless body area networks: channel measurements and results , 2003, IEEE Conference on Ultra Wideband Systems and Technologies, 2003.

[40]  Dharma P. Agrawal,et al.  Next-Generation Wearable Networks , 2003, Computer.

[41]  Hüseyin Arslan,et al.  A survey of spectrum sensing algorithms for cognitive radio applications , 2009, IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials.

[42]  J. Henriques,et al.  A Sensor Middleware for integration of heterogeneous medical devices , 2010, 2010 Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology.

[43]  Jianping Yin,et al.  Requirements of Quality of Service in Wireless Sensor Network , 2006, International Conference on Networking, International Conference on Systems and International Conference on Mobile Communications and Learning Technologies (ICNICONSMCL'06).

[44]  Carmen C. Y. Poon,et al.  A novel biometrics method to secure wireless body area sensor networks for telemedicine and m-health , 2006, IEEE Communications Magazine.

[45]  Wolfgang Fichtner,et al.  An Attempt to Model the Human Body as a Communication Channel , 2007, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

[46]  Martin Wattenberg,et al.  A fuzzy commitment scheme , 1999, CCS '99.

[47]  Ivan Martinovic,et al.  A survey on dependable routing in sensor networks, ad hoc networks, and cellular networks , 2004, Proceedings. 30th Euromicro Conference, 2004..

[48]  Weifang Wang,et al.  Spectrum sensing in cognitive radio , 2016 .

[49]  P. Wilson,et al.  Development of electronic textiles to support networks, communications, and medical applications in future U.S. Military protective clothing systems , 2005, IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine.

[50]  O.O. Olugbara,et al.  Utility Grid Computing and Body Area Network as Enabler for Ubiquitous Rural e-Healthcare Service Provisioning , 2007, 2007 9th International Conference on e-Health Networking, Application and Services.

[51]  Alberto Fazzi,et al.  Human-centric connectivity enabled by body-coupled communications , 2009, IEEE Communications Magazine.

[52]  Radu Marculescu,et al.  On optimization of e-textile systems using redundancy and energy-aware routing , 2006, IEEE Transactions on Computers.

[53]  SuKyoung Lee,et al.  Energy-efficient multi-hop transmission in Body Area Networks , 2009, 2009 IEEE 20th International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications.

[54]  John A. Stankovic,et al.  Radio-triggered wake-up capability for sensor networks , 2004, Proceedings. RTAS 2004. 10th IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium, 2004..

[55]  Brian P. Ginsburg,et al.  Low-Power Impulse UWB Architectures and Circuits , 2009, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[56]  Paul Lukowicz,et al.  On-Body Sensing: From Gesture-Based Input to Activity-Driven Interaction , 2010, Computer.

[57]  T.C.W. Schenk,et al.  Experimental characterization of the body-coupled communications channel , 2008, 2008 IEEE International Symposium on Wireless Communication Systems.

[58]  Rabiah Ahmad,et al.  Surveying the Wireless Body Area Network in the realm of wireless communication , 2011, 2011 7th International Conference on Information Assurance and Security (IAS).

[59]  A. Wittneben,et al.  Propagation effects in UWB body area networks , 2005, 2005 IEEE International Conference on Ultra-Wideband.

[60]  Michal Mackowiak,et al.  Challenges for Body Area Networks Concerning Radio Aspects , 2011, EW.

[61]  I. Balasingham,et al.  Architecture of an ultra wideband wireless body area network for medical applications , 2009, 2009 2nd International Symposium on Applied Sciences in Biomedical and Communication Technologies.

[62]  R. M. Edwards,et al.  Understanding Body-centric antennas , 2010, 2010 Loughborough Antennas & Propagation Conference.

[63]  Brian J. d'Auriol,et al.  Optimal Routing in Sensor Networks for In-home Health Monitoring with Multi-factor Considerations , 2008, 2008 Sixth Annual IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (PerCom).

[64]  K.K. Venkatasubramanian,et al.  Plethysmogram-based secure inter-sensor communication in Body Area Networks , 2008, MILCOM 2008 - 2008 IEEE Military Communications Conference.

[65]  Yu-Chee Tseng,et al.  A Wireless Human Motion Capturing System for Home Rehabilitation , 2009, 2009 Tenth International Conference on Mobile Data Management: Systems, Services and Middleware.

[66]  Ilangko Balasingham,et al.  Cognitive radio for medical wireless body area networks , 2011, 2011 IEEE 16th International Workshop on Computer Aided Modeling and Design of Communication Links and Networks (CAMAD).

[67]  Vinay Kolar,et al.  CHALLENGES IN DIRECTIONAL ANTENNAS , 2004 .