Challenges in body area networks for healthcare: the MAC

Boulis, Athanassios; Smith, David B.; Miniutti, Dino; Libman, Lavy; Tselishchev, Yuriy

doi:10.1109/mcom.2012.6194389

Cited by 145 publications

(69 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…However WBSNs have certain unique properties so that the conclusions for general WSNs may not be applied in WBSNs. According 50 to [15], the energy constraint for WBSNs is even harsher than that of WSNs because the volume of on-body or in-body sensor nodes needs to be tiny and the sensors are hard to be recharged generally. Since excessive radiation absorption will cause damages to the vulnerable body tissues, the transmission power of the sensor nodes and relay nodes need to be constrained.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In order to deal with unstable channel status, relay has been proposed as one of the solutions in [15]. In [16,17], the authors consider using relays to improve 60 the network performance.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Observed from real-life data set [4], it can be concluded that the range and speed of on-body channel fluctuation are much larger for WBSNs than traditional WSNs. Moreover, propagation of implanted nodes' signals, on the other hand, will suffer from significant attenuation when signals go through various tissues and organs [5], and even greater challenges exist 15 because of the complexity and variation of body tissues. Energy efficiency is more crucial in WBSN than that is in traditional WSNs, since sensor nodes are of smaller size in order to be wearable and implantable.…”

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Topology design and cross-layer optimization for wireless body sensor networks

et al. 2017

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Wireless Body Sensor Networks play a crucial role in digital health care nowadays. Due to the size limitation on the sensor nodes and the life critical characteristics of the signals, there are stringent requirements on network's reliability and energy efficiency. In this article, we propose a mathematical optimization problem that jointly considers network topology design and cross-layer optimization in WBSNs. We introduce multilevel primal and dual decomposition methods and manage to solve the proposed non-convex mixed-integer optimization problem. A solution with fast convergence rate based on binary search is provided. Simulation results have been supplemented to show that our proposed method yields much better performance than existing solutions.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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Topology design and cross-layer optimization for wireless body sensor networks

et al. 2017

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“…Though WBANs are applied within limited range, the unpredictable channel environment through human body is a challenge for wireless communication [2]. The reason is that the transmission power of sensors need to keep low to save energy and avoid impairing body tissues.…”

Section: Introduction Inspired By the Development Of Internet-of-tmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In such a network, energy efficiency and transmission reliability are major concerns. Reducing outage rate is thus crucial since it indicates less retransmissions, which will save energy and reduce transmission delay.Though WBANs are applied within limited range, the unpredictable channel environment through human body is a challenge for wireless communication [2]. The reason is that the transmission power of sensors need to keep low to save energy and avoid impairing body tissues.…”

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confidence: 99%

Beacon-based opportunistic scheduling in wireless body area network

Zhou

Sheng

Leung

et al. 2016

2016 38th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC)

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Abstract-Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) are one of the key technologies that support the development of digital health care, which has attracted increasing attention in recent years. Compared with general Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), WBANs have more stringent requirements on reliability and energy efficiency. Though WBANs are applied within limited transmission range, the on-body channel condition can be very challenging because of blocking or absorbing of signal. In this paper, we are looking into the design of Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols and propose an opportunistic scheduling scheme by applying heuristic scheduling and dynamic superframe length adjustment to improve the system performance. The simulations have been supplemented to show the advantages of the proposed solutions in outage rate performance, compared with existing solutions. I. INTRODUCTION Inspired by the development of Internet-of-Things [5], [6],Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs), which collect and transfer real time body signals for medical care purpose, play a fundamental role in future health applications. In such a network, energy efficiency and transmission reliability are major concerns. Reducing outage rate is thus crucial since it indicates less retransmissions, which will save energy and reduce transmission delay.Though WBANs are applied within limited range, the unpredictable channel environment through human body is a challenge for wireless communication [2]. The reason is that the transmission power of sensors need to keep low to save energy and avoid impairing body tissues. At the same time, body parts can block and absorb the signals, making the link status vulnerable. Opportunistic scheduling can take channel state into consideration and since the channel fluctuation is a major influence on the performance of WBANs, it has the potential of improving the system performance to a large extent by selecting good channels.A survey [1] provides a comprehensive summary on opportunistic scheduling. So far, the opportunistic scheduling research largely focuses on cellular networks, which are not necessarily suitable for WBANs. WBANs have special requirements of extremely low energy consumption and high reliability that are not considered by the methods in [1].Several solutions have been proposed focusing on opportunistic scheduling to WBANs. [8], [9], [11] focus on applying Markov chain model to forecast the channel condition based on the previous transmissions. In [8], [9], the

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A review of radio channel models for body centric communications

2014

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The human body is an extremely challenging environment for the operation of wireless communications systems, not least because of the complex antenna-body electromagnetic interaction effects which can occur. This is further compounded by the impact of movement and the propagation characteristics of the local environment which all have an effect upon body centric communications channels. As the successful design of body area networks (BANs) and other types of body centric system is inextricably linked to a thorough understanding of these factors, the aim of this paper is to conduct a survey of the current state of the art in relation to propagation and channel models primarily for BANs but also considering other types of body centric communications. We initially discuss some of the standardization efforts performed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 802.15.6 task group before focusing on the two most popular types of technologies currently being considered for BANs, namely narrowband and Ultrawideband (UWB) communications. For narrowband communications the applicability of a generic path loss model is contended, before presenting some of the scenario specific models which have proven successful. The impacts of human body shadowing and small-scale fading are also presented alongside some of the most recent research into the Doppler and time dependencies of BANs. For UWB BAN communications, we again consider the path loss as well as empirical tap delay line models developed from a number of extensive channel measurement campaigns conducted by research institutions around the world. Ongoing efforts within collaborative projects such as Committee on Science and Technology Action IC1004 are also described. Finally, recent years have also seen significant developments in other areas of body centric communications such as off-body and body-to-body communications. We highlight some of the newest relevant research in these areas as well as discussing some of the advanced topics which are currently being addressed in the field of body centric communications.

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Challenges in body area networks for healthcare: the MAC

Cited by 145 publications

References 12 publications

Topology design and cross-layer optimization for wireless body sensor networks

Topology design and cross-layer optimization for wireless body sensor networks

Beacon-based opportunistic scheduling in wireless body area network

A review of radio channel models for body centric communications

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