Performance evaluation of reliable communications for wireless in-body sensor networks

Wireless in-body sensor networks are attracting increasing attention for numerous healthcare applications and medical services. Implant devices are widely employed to measure physiological signals inside the human body in a simple, long lifetime and continuous approach. However, due to the strict technical requirements of implant devices, there exist numerous key research challenges in this area. Considering realistic transmission power requirements based on the IEEE 802.15.6 standard safety regulations, the channel characteristics of implant to deep implant and implant to body surface communication scenarios are investigated. Furthermore, multiple vital quality of service (QoS) factors of implant communication channels are studied regarding channel capacity, bit error rate (BER), link quality and data rate. The system performance evaluation indicates that the data transmission rate can be optimized up to 10 Mbps. Furthermore, the transmission distance supported by in-body to on-body communication path is 2 meters, at 1 µW while the in-body to deep tissue region communication channel achieves less than 1 meter. The results proposed in this paper give an outlook of the intra-body networking system performance and can be applied to in-body communication system implementation research.

[1]  Michael Cheffena.  Performance Evaluation of Wireless Body Sensors in the Presence of Slow and Fast Fading Effects , 2015, IEEE Sensors Journal.

[2]  Ingrid Moerman,et al.  A survey on wireless body area networks , 2011, Wirel. Networks.

[3]  Konstantina S. Nikita,et al.  Reliable and Energy-Efficient Communications for Wireless Biomedical Implant Systems , 2014, IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics.

[4]  M. Higgins,et al.  Analysis of Into-Out Wireless Body Area Network Systems : Towards QoS-Aware Health Internet of Things Applications , 2016 .

[5]  Abbas Jamalipour,et al.  Wireless Body Area Networks: A Survey , 2014, IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials.

[6]  Ashraf Darwish,et al.  Wearable and Implantable Wireless Sensor Network Solutions for Healthcare Monitoring , 2011, Sensors.

[7]  Victor C. M. Leung,et al.  Mobility Support for Health Monitoring at Home Using Wearable Sensors , 2011, IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine.

[8]  Victor C. M. Leung,et al.  IEEE 802.15.4 Beaconing Strategy and the Coexistence Problem in ISM Band , 2015, IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid.

[9]  Jaehoon Choi,et al.  Design of a Miniaturized High-Isolation Diversity Antenna for Wearable WBAN Applications , 2013 .

[10]  Jelena V. Misic,et al.  Bridging Between IEEE 802.15.6 and IEEE 802.11e for Wireless Healthcare Networks , 2015, Ad Hoc Sens. Wirel. Networks.

[11]  Matthew D. Higgins,et al.  A communication link analysis based on biological implant wireless body area networks , 2016 .

[12]  Matthew D. Higgins,et al.  Analysis of In-to-Out Wireless Body Area Network Systems: Towards QoS-Aware Health Internet of Things Applications , 2016 .

[13]  Jianfeng Wang,et al.  Emerging cognitive radio applications: A survey , 2011, IEEE Communications Magazine.

[14]  Matthew D. Higgins,et al.  An In-body communication link based on 400 MHz MICS band wireless body area networks , 2015, 2015 IEEE 20th International Workshop on Computer Aided Modelling and Design of Communication Links and Networks (CAMAD).

[15]  Matthew D. Higgins,et al.  An incremental relay based cooperative routing protocol for wireless in-body sensor networks , 2016, 2016 IEEE 12th International Conference on Wireless and Mobile Computing, Networking and Communications (WiMob).

[16]  Luc Martens,et al.  In-to-Out Body Antenna-Independent Path Loss Model for Multilayered Tissues and Heterogeneous Medium , 2014, Sensors.

[17]  Zahoor Ali Khan,et al.  A QoS-aware Routing Protocol for Reliability Sensitive Data in Hospital Body Area Networks , 2013, ANT/SEIT.

[18]  Özlem Durmaz Incel,et al.  QoS-aware MAC protocols for wireless sensor networks: A survey , 2011, Comput. Networks.

[19]  Chiara Buratti,et al.  A Survey on Wireless Body Area Networks: Technologies and Design Challenges , 2014, IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials.

[20]  Nadeem Javaid,et al.  A Relay Based Routing Protocol for Wireless In-Body Sensor Networks , 2015, Wirel. Pers. Commun..

[21]  G. Vermeeren,et al.  In-body Path Loss Model for Homogeneous Human Tissues , 2012, IEEE Transactions on Electromagnetic Compatibility.