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

Smart Computing and Sensing Technologies for Animal Welfare: A Systematic Review

Animals play a profoundly important and intricate role in our lives today. Dogs have been human companions for thousands of years, but they now work closely with us to assist the disabled, and in combat and search and rescue situations. Farm animals are a critical part of the global food supply chain, and there is increasing consumer interest in organically fed and humanely raised livestock, and how it impacts our health and environmental footprint. Wild animals are threatened with extinction by human induced factors, and shrinking and compromised habitat. This review sets the goal to systematically survey the existing literature in smart computing and sensing technologies for domestic, farm and wild animal welfare. We use the notion of \emph{animal welfare} in broad terms, to review the technologies for assessing whether animals are healthy, free of pain and suffering, and also positively stimulated in their environment. Also the notion of \emph{smart computing and sensing} is used in broad terms, to refer to computing and sensing systems that are not isolated but interconnected with communication networks, and capable of remote data collection, processing, exchange and analysis. We review smart technologies for domestic animals, indoor and outdoor animal farming, as well as animals in the wild and zoos. The findings of this review are expected to motivate future research and contribute to data, information and communication management as well as policy for animal welfare

Ubiquitous Computing for Remote Cardiac Patient Monitoring: A Survey

New wireless technologies, such as wireless LAN and sensor networks, for telecardiology purposes give new possibilities for monitoring vital parameters with wearable biomedical sensors, and give patients the freedom to be mobile and still be under continuous monitoring and thereby better quality of patient care. This paper will detail the architecture and quality-of-service (QoS) characteristics in integrated wireless telecardiology platforms. It will also discuss the current promising hardware/software platforms for wireless cardiac monitoring. The design methodology and challenges are provided for realistic implementation

Remote Patient Monitoring and MANET: Applications and Challenges

In the recent years, we have seen a rapid advancement in the field of mobile computing due to the rapid increase in the no. of inexpensive, widely available wireless devices. However, modern devices, applications and protocols solely focuses on cellular or wireless local area networks (WLANs), not taking into account the great potential offered by mobile ad hoc networking.. Apart from conventional SMS and voice calling, the mobile technology has found tremendous applications in various departments such as military services, healthcare services, etc. In this paper, we have discussed a prototype of a wireless patient monitoring system for the management of cardiac predicament and also compared its implication in ad hoc network environment. This is because it is not always practical to maintain wireless mobile communication in remote areas and hilly terrains and these places usually lack good doctors and proper health care facilities to treat various diseases. This problem has been addressed in this paper by the design and implementation of an Ad hoc sensor network based solution. The proposed technique is intended specifically for remote rural areas where the infrastructural facilities such as the internet, GSM/GPRS etc are not available. There are various health parameters like pulse rate, temperature etc. through which patients can be monitored. The work can be categorised into three stages of data acquisition, data processing and data communication stages. A data acquisition stage consists of sensors to monitor the temperature and pulse rate. The sensor outputs are converted to digital form and read by a basic atmega16 microcontroller which does some processing and is sent through the serial port to the data processing software. In data processing module critical values of the measured data can be set; exceeding which the processer will initiate the communication unit to send SMS to the predefined mobile numbers via GSM module. When any deviation from the normal behaviour is detected or the received parameters of the patient goes beyond the threshold limit, the processing unit automatically transmits therelevant data to the receiver’s device as a SMS via a GSM module and at the same time the buzzer starts ringing. DOI: 10.17762/ijritcc2321-8169.150616

Analyzing Delay in Wireless Multi-hop Heterogeneous Body Area Networks

With increase in ageing population, health care market keeps growing. There is a need for monitoring of health issues. Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) consists of wireless sensors attached on or inside human body for monitoring vital health related problems e.g, Electro Cardiogram (ECG), Electro Encephalogram (EEG), ElectronyStagmography (ENG) etc. Due to life threatening situations, timely sending of data is essential. For data to reach health care center, there must be a proper way of sending data through reliable connection and with minimum delay. In this paper transmission delay of different paths, through which data is sent from sensor to health care center over heterogeneous multi-hop wireless channel is analyzed. Data of medical related diseases is sent through three different paths. In all three paths, data from sensors first reaches ZigBee, which is the common link in all three paths. Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX), Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) are connected with ZigBee. Each network (WLAN, WiMAX, UMTS) is setup according to environmental conditions, suitability of device and availability of structure for that device. Data from these networks is sent to IP-Cloud, which is further connected to health care center. Delay of data reaching each device is calculated and represented graphically. Main aim of this paper is to calculate delay of each link in each path over multi-hop wireless channel.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1208.240