TITLE:
A Review of Wireless Body Area Networks for Medical Applications
AUTHORS:
Sana ULLAH, Pervez KHAN, Niamat ULLAH, Shahnaz SALEEM, Henry HIGGINS, Kyung Sup KWAK
KEYWORDS:
Wireless Body Area Networks, Low Power MAC, Body Sensor Networks, BSN, WBAN
JOURNAL NAME:
International Journal of Communications, Network and System Sciences,
Vol.2 No.8,
November
17,
2009
ABSTRACT: 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 a WBAN. In addition, we briefly outline some of the WBAN applications with examples. Our discussion realizes a need for new power-efficient solu-tions towards in-body and on-body sensor networks.