A Review of Wireless Body Area Networks for Medical Applications

Recent advances in Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technology, integrated circuits, and wireless communication have allowed the realization of Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs). WBANs promise unobtrusive ambulatory health monitoring for a long period of time and provide real-time updates of the patient's status to the physician. They are widely used for ubiquitous healthcare, entertainment, and military applications. This paper reviews the key aspects of WBANs for numerous applications. We present a WBAN infrastructure that provides solutions to on-demand, emergency, and normal traffic. We further discuss in-body antenna design and low-power MAC protocol for WBAN. In addition, we briefly outline some of the WBAN applications with examples. Our discussion realizes a need for new power-efficient solutions towards in-body and on-body sensor networks.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures, and 3 tables. In V3, the manuscript is converted to LaTe

A comprehensive survey of wireless body area networks on PHY, MAC, and network layers solutions

Recent advances in microelectronics and integrated circuits, system-on-chip design, wireless communication and intelligent low-power sensors have allowed the realization of a Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN). A WBAN is a collection of low-power, miniaturized, invasive/non-invasive lightweight wireless sensor nodes that monitor the human body functions and the surrounding environment. In addition, it supports a number of innovative and interesting applications such as ubiquitous healthcare, entertainment, interactive gaming, and military applications. In this paper, the fundamental mechanisms of WBAN including architecture and topology, wireless implant communication, low-power Medium Access Control (MAC) and routing protocols are reviewed. A comprehensive study of the proposed technologies for WBAN at Physical (PHY), MAC, and Network layers is presented and many useful solutions are discussed for each layer. Finally, numerous WBAN applications are highlighted

Wireless body sensor networks for health-monitoring applications

This is an author-created, un-copyedited version of an article accepted for publication in Physiological Measurement. The publisher is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from it. The Version of Record is available online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0967-3334/29/11/R01

A Review on Provisioning Quality of Service of Wireless Telemedicine for E-Health Services

In general, on-line medical consultation reduces time required for medical consultation induces improvement in the quality and efficiency of healthcare services. All major types of current e-health applications such as ECG, X-ray, video, diagnosis images and other common applications have been included in the scope of the study. In addition, the provision of Quality of Service (QoS) for the application of specific healthcare services in e-health, the scheme of priority for e-health services and the support of QoS in wireless networks and techniques or methods for IEEE 802.11 to guarantee the provision of QoS has also been assessed. In e-health, medical services in remote locations such as rural healthcare centers, ambulances, ships as well as home healthcare services can be supported through the applications of e-health services such as medical databases, electronic health records and the routing of text, audio, video and images. Given this, an adaptive resource allocation for a wireless network with multiple service types and multiple priorities have been proposed. For the provision of an acceptable QoS level to users of e-health services, prioritization is an important criterion in a multi-traffic network. The requirement for QoS provisioning in wireless broadband medical networks have paved the pathway for bandwidth requirements and the real-time or live transmission of medical applications. From the study, good performance of the proposed scheme has been validated by the results obtained. The proposed wireless network is capable of handling medical applications for both normal and life-threatening conditions as characterized by the level of emergencies. In addition, the bandwidth allocation and admission control algorithm for IEEE 802.16- based design specifically for wireless telemedicine/e-health services have also been presented in the study. It has been concluded that under busy traffic conditions, the proposed architecture can used as a feasible and reliable infrastructure network for telemedicine

Provisioning Quality of Service of Wireless Telemedicine for E-Health Services: A Review

In general, on-line medical consultation reduces time required for medical consultation and induces improvement in the quality and efficiency of healthcare services. The scope of study includes several key features of present day e-health applications such as X-ray, ECG, video, diagnosis images and other common applications. Moreover, the provision of Quality of Service (QoS) in terms of specific medical care services in e-health, the priority set for e-health services and the support of QoS in wireless networks and techniques or methods aimed at IEEE 802.11 to secure the provision of QoS has been assessed as well. In e-health, medical services in remote places which include rustic healthcare centres, ships, ambulances and home healthcare services can be supported through the applications of e-health services such as medical databases, electronic health data and the transferring of text, video, sound and images. Given this, a proposal has been made for a multiple service wireless networking with multiple sets of priorities. In relation to the terms of an acceptable QoS level by the customers of e-health services, prioritization is an important criterion in a multi-traffic network. The requirement for QoS in medical networking of wireless broadband has paved the way for bandwidth prerequisites and the live transmission or real-time medical applications. The proposed wireless network is capable of handling medical applications for both normal and life-threatening conditions as characterized by the level of emergencies. In addition, the allocation of bandwidth and the system that controls admittance designed based on IEEE 802.16 especially for e-health services or wireless telemedicine will be discussed in this study. It has been concluded that under busy traffic conditions, the proposed architecture can used as a feasible and reliable infrastructure network for telemedicine

Considering Pigeons for Carrying Delay Tolerant Networking based Internet traffic in Developing Countries

There are many regions in the developing world that suffer from poor infrastructure and lack of connection to the Internet and Public Switched Telephone Networks (PSTN). Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN) is a technology that has been advocated for providing store-and-forward network connectivity in these regions over the past few years. DTN often relies on human mobility in one form or another to support transportation of DTN data. This presents a socio-technical problem related to organizing how the data should be transported. In some situations the demand for DTN traffic can exceed that which is possible to support with human mobility, so alternative mechanisms are needed. In this paper we propose using live carrier pigeons (columba livia) to transport DTN data. Carrier pigeons have been used for transporting packets of information for a long time, but have not yet been seriously considered for transporting DTN traffic. We provide arguements that this mode of DTN data transport provides promise, and should receive attention from research and development projects. We provide an overview of pigeon characteristics to analyze the feasibility of using them for data transport, and present simulations of a DTN network that utilizes pigeon transport in order to provide an initial investigation into expected performance characteristics

KALwEN: a new practical and interoperable key management scheme for body sensor networks

Key management is the pillar of a security architecture. Body sensor networks (BSNs) pose several challenges–some inherited from wireless sensor networks (WSNs), some unique to themselves–that require a new key management scheme to be tailor-made. The challenge is taken on, and the result is KALwEN, a new parameterized key management scheme that combines the best-suited cryptographic techniques in a seamless framework. KALwEN is user-friendly in the sense that it requires no expert knowledge of a user, and instead only requires a user to follow a simple set of instructions when bootstrapping or extending a network. One of KALwEN's key features is that it allows sensor devices from different manufacturers, which expectedly do not have any pre-shared secret, to establish secure communications with each other. KALwEN is decentralized, such that it does not rely on the availability of a local processing unit (LPU). KALwEN supports secure global broadcast, local broadcast, and local (neighbor-to-neighbor) unicast, while preserving past key secrecy and future key secrecy (FKS). The fact that the cryptographic protocols of KALwEN have been formally verified also makes a convincing case. With both formal verification and experimental evaluation, our results should appeal to theorists and practitioners alike

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