Body Area Networks in Healthcare: A Brief State of the Art

Abstract

A body area network (BAN) comprises a set of devices that sense their surroundings, activate and communicate with each other when an event is detected in its environment. Although BAN technology was developed more than 20 years ago, in recent years, its popularity has greatly increased. The reason is the availability of smaller and more powerful devices, more efficient communication protocols and improved duration of portable batteries. BANs are applied in many fields, healthcare being one of the most important through gathering information about patients and their surroundings. A continuous stream of information may help physicians with making well-informed decisions about a patient's treatment. Based on recent literature, the authors review BAN architectures, network topologies, energy sources, sensor types, applications, as well as their main challenges. In addition, the paper focuses on the principal requirements of safety, security, and sustainability. In addition, future research and improvements are discussed.

Comparison of RGB-D and IMU-based gesture recognition for human-robot interaction in remanufacturing

“…With the advent of lightweight IoT technologies and wireless body area networks [41], wearable-based approaches are increasingly being adopted as a costeffective alternative to computer-vision systems. Motion capture devices are typically based on IMUs which have a low demand of hardware resources and energy consumption.…”

A Biologically Inspired Algorithm for Low Energy Clustering Problem in Body Area Network

“…Step 6. Use employed bees to update the food source in (6) and convert to binary code in (7) Step 7. The onlookers are selected according to the probability Possibility n to produce a new solution…”

“…Medical sensor nodes are evenly distributed in different areas of the human body, including the head, limbs, and trunk. In addition, in order to transmit the collected vital data effectively, the transmission distance, transmission rate, and residual energy of each node must also be fully considered [7,8]. A BAN consists of distributed autonomous sensor nodes, and each sensing unit consists of sensing boards, processor, short-range radio transmitter unit, and battery.…”

Special Issue on Body Area Networks

“…One example of such applications is (remote) healthcare [38][39][40][41][42][43], where WBANs are considered a key technology to help facing the side effects of an aging population on healthcare systems and society in general.This special issue is devoted to collecting contributions from researchers on the realization of real-world and reliable wireless body area networks, platforms and applications, addressing the major associated challenges. Nine papers have been selected for this special issue, beginning with a paper [44] that gives the reader a general overview of the WBAN research field and highlights its main features and requirements, sensor types and contributions to healthcare, concluding with the main current challenges. The other eight research papers are segmented into three main application areas: energy harvesting, communications and applications in the research field of wireless body area networks.Energy harvesting: Under the assumption that a single energy harvester from a human body is not enough to reliably drive an electronic device, propose energy harvesting by combining multiple energy harvesters in wireless body area network applications.…”

“…This special issue is devoted to collecting contributions from researchers on the realization of real-world and reliable wireless body area networks, platforms and applications, addressing the major associated challenges. Nine papers have been selected for this special issue, beginning with a paper [44] that gives the reader a general overview of the WBAN research field and highlights its main features and requirements, sensor types and contributions to healthcare, concluding with the main current challenges. The other eight research papers are segmented into three main application areas: energy harvesting, communications and applications in the research field of wireless body area networks.…”