A Review on Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) for Health Monitoring System: Implementation Protocols
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paper_title: A survey of research in WBAN for biomedical and scientific applications

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A review of earlier work on Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) is given here as these networks have gained a lot of research attention in recent years since they offer tremendous benefits for remote health monitoring and continuous, real-time patient care. However, as with any wireless communication, data security in WBANs is a challenging design issue. Since such networks consist of small sensors placed on the human body, they impose resource and computational restrictions, thereby making the use of sophisticated and advanced encryption algorithms infeasible. This calls for the design of algorithms with a robust key generation management scheme, which are reasonably resource optimal. The main purpose of the WBAN is to make it possible for patients who need permanent monitoring to be fully mobile. The WBAN is worn by a patient and basically consists of a set of lightweight devices that monitor and wirelessly transmit certain bio signals (vital signs) to a Backend System at a Healthcare center. A monitoring healthcare specialist retrieves the patient data over a reliable wired connection. The focus is on the wireless technologies Bluetooth and Packet Radio Switching (GPRS), because of their important role of communication. This paper discusses several uses of the WBANs technology, the most obvious application of a WBAN is being in the medical sector. However, there are also more recreational uses to WBANs which are mentioned here. This paper discusses the technologies about WBANs, as well as different applications for WBANs. A survey of the state of the art in Wireless Body Area Networks is given to provide a better understanding of the current research issues in this emerging field.
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paper_title: Monitoring Motor Fluctuations in Patients With Parkinson's Disease Using Wearable Sensors

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This paper presents the results of a pilot study to assess the feasibility of using accelerometer data to estimate the severity of symptoms and motor complications in patients with Parkinson's disease. A support vector machine (SVM) classifier was implemented to estimate the severity of tremor, bradykinesia and dyskinesia from accelerometer data features. SVM-based estimates were compared with clinical scores derived via visual inspection of video recordings taken while patients performed a series of standardized motor tasks. The analysis of the video recordings was performed by clinicians trained in the use of scales for the assessment of the severity of Parkinsonian symptoms and motor complications. Results derived from the accelerometer time series were analyzed to assess the effect on the estimation of clinical scores of the duration of the window utilized to derive segments (to eventually compute data features) from the accelerometer data, the use of different SVM kernels and misclassification cost values, and the use of data features derived from different motor tasks. Results were also analyzed to assess which combinations of data features carried enough information to reliably assess the severity of symptoms and motor complications. Combinations of data features were compared taking into consideration the computational cost associated with estimating each data feature on the nodes of a body sensor network and the effect of using such data features on the reliability of SVM-based estimates of the severity of Parkinsonian symptoms and motor complications.
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paper_title: Wireless body area networks: challenges, trends and emerging technologies

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We provide a comprehensive review of the challenges and emerging technologies for WBANs: Wireless Body Area Networks. We describe leading applications and the tiers of the WBAN architectures, itemizing their major design areas. A succinct review of solutions, progress and possible future research in the areas of sensors, power and radio hardware components, the network stack, localization and mobility techniques, security and privacy, and of certification and standardization follows. We finally make the connection between WBANs and the fast growing research field of Cognitive Radios, which help establish efficient wireless transmissions in an increasingly crowded radio spectrum
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paper_title: Monitoring Motor Fluctuations in Patients With Parkinson's Disease Using Wearable Sensors

paper_content:

This paper presents the results of a pilot study to assess the feasibility of using accelerometer data to estimate the severity of symptoms and motor complications in patients with Parkinson's disease. A support vector machine (SVM) classifier was implemented to estimate the severity of tremor, bradykinesia and dyskinesia from accelerometer data features. SVM-based estimates were compared with clinical scores derived via visual inspection of video recordings taken while patients performed a series of standardized motor tasks. The analysis of the video recordings was performed by clinicians trained in the use of scales for the assessment of the severity of Parkinsonian symptoms and motor complications. Results derived from the accelerometer time series were analyzed to assess the effect on the estimation of clinical scores of the duration of the window utilized to derive segments (to eventually compute data features) from the accelerometer data, the use of different SVM kernels and misclassification cost values, and the use of data features derived from different motor tasks. Results were also analyzed to assess which combinations of data features carried enough information to reliably assess the severity of symptoms and motor complications. Combinations of data features were compared taking into consideration the computational cost associated with estimating each data feature on the nodes of a body sensor network and the effect of using such data features on the reliability of SVM-based estimates of the severity of Parkinsonian symptoms and motor complications.
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paper_title: Energy-Efficient Low Duty Cycle MAC Protocol for Wireless Body Area Networks

paper_content:

This paper presents an energy-efficient medium access control protocol suitable for communication in a wireless body area network for remote monitoring of physiological signals such as EEG and ECG. The protocol takes advantage of the static nature of the body area network to implement the effective time-division multiple access (TDMA) strategy with very little amount of overhead and almost no idle listening (by static, we refer to the fixed topology of the network investigated). The main goal is to develop energy-efficient and reliable communication protocol to support streaming of large amount of data. TDMA synchronization problems are discussed and solutions are presented. Equations for duty cycle calculation are also derived for power consumption and battery life predictions. The power consumption model was also validated through measurements. Our results show that the protocol is energy efficient for streaming communication as well as sending short bursts of data, and thus can be used for different types of physiological signals with different sample rates. The protocol is implemented on the analog devices ADF7020 RF transceivers.
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paper_title: MAC protocols for wireless sensor networks: a survey

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Wireless sensor networks are appealing to researchers due to their wide range of application potential in areas such as target detection and tracking, environmental monitoring, industrial process monitoring, and tactical systems. However, low sensing ranges result in dense networks and thus it becomes necessary to achieve an efficient medium-access protocol subject to power constraints. Various medium-access control (MAC) protocols with different objectives have been proposed for wireless sensor networks. In this article, we first outline the sensor network properties that are crucial for the design of MAC layer protocols. Then, we describe several MAC protocols proposed for sensor networks, emphasizing their strengths and weaknesses. Finally, we point out open research issues with regard to MAC layer design.
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paper_title: Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) Design Techniques and Performance Evaluation

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In recent years interest in the application of Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) for patient monitoring applications has grown significantly. A WBAN can be used to develop patient monitoring systems which offer flexibility to medical staff and mobility to patients. Patients monitoring could involve a range of activities including data collection from various body sensors for storage and diagnosis, transmitting data to remote medical databases, and controlling medical appliances, etc. Also, WBANs could operate in an interconnected mode to enable remote patient monitoring using telehealth/e-health applications. A WBAN can also be used to monitor athletes' performance and assist them in training activities. For such applications it is very important that a WBAN collects and transmits data reliably, and in a timely manner to a monitoring entity. In order to address these issues, this paper presents WBAN design techniques for medical applications. We examine the WBAN design issues with particular emphasis on the design of MAC protocols and power consumption profiles of WBAN. Some simulation results are presented to further illustrate the performances of various WBAN design techniques.
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paper_title: Battery-dynamics driven tdma mac protocols for wireless body-area monitoring networks in healthcare applications

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We propose the cross-layer based battery-aware time division multiple access (TDMA) medium access control (MAC) protocols for wireless body-area monitoring networks in wireless healthcare applications. By taking into account the joint effect of electrochemical properties of the battery, time-varying wireless fading channels, and packet queuing characteristics, our proposed schemes are designed to prolong the battery lifespan of the wireless sensor nodes while guaranteeing the reliable and timely message delivery, which is critically important for the patient monitoring networks. In addition, we develop a Markov chain model to analyze the performance of our proposed schemes. Both the obtained analytical and simulation results show that our proposed schemes can significantly increase the battery lifespan of sensor nodes while satisfying the reliability and delay-bound quality of service (QoS) requirements for wireless body-area monitoring networks. Furthermore, the case study of the electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring application shows that besides meeting the delay requirements, our proposed schemes outperform the IEEE 802.15.4 and Bluetooth protocols in terms of battery lifespan.
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paper_title: Wireless Body Area Networks: A Survey

paper_content:

Recent developments and technological advancements in wireless communication, MicroElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS) technology and integrated circuits has enabled low-power, intelligent, miniaturized, invasive/non-invasive micro and nano-technology sensor nodes strategically placed in or around the human body to be used in various applications, such as personal health monitoring. This exciting new area of research is called Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) and leverages the emerging IEEE 802.15.6 and IEEE 802.15.4j standards, specifically standardized for medical WBANs. The aim of WBANs is to simplify and improve speed, accuracy, and reliability of communication of sensors/actuators within, on, and in the immediate proximity of a human body. The vast scope of challenges associated with WBANs has led to numerous publications. In this paper, we survey the current state-of-art of WBANs based on the latest standards and publications. Open issues and challenges within each area are also explored as a source of inspiration towards future developments in WBANs.
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paper_title: A novel energy efficient MAC protocol for Wireless Body Area Network

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Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) is the most promising technology in e-health applications. Energy efficiency stands out as the paramount issue for WBAN. In this paper, an energy efficient MAC protocol named Quasi-Sleep-Preempt-Supported (QS-PS) is proposed. The protocol is mainly TDMA-based: nodes transmit packets in the allocated slots, while entering the Q-Sleep mode in other slots. Moreover, for a node with emergency packet, it can broadcast a special designed Awakening Message to wake up the whole network and preempts the right to use the current slot to transmit that emergency packet, thus decreasing delay. Compared with relevant protocols, QS-PS can achieve high energy efficiency and decrease the delay of both normal packets and emergency packets.
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paper_title: Improving the reliability of wireless body area networks

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In this paper we propose a highly reliable wireless body area network (WBAN) that provides increased throughput and avoids single points of failure. Such networks improve upon current WBANs by taking advantage of a new technology, Cooperative Network Coding (CNC). Using CNC in wireless body area network to support real-time applications is an attractive solution to combat packet loss, reduce latency due to retransmissions, avoid single points of failure, and improve the probability of successful recovery of the information at the destination. In this paper, we have extended Cooperative Network Coding, from its original configuration (one-to-one) to many-to-many as in multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) systems. Cooperative Network Coding results in increased throughput and network reliability because of the cooperation of the nodes in transmitting coded combination packets across spatially distinct paths to the information sinks.
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paper_title: A Robust Protocol Stack for Multi-hop Wireless Body Area Networks with Transmit Power Adaptation ∗

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Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) have characteristic properties that should be considered for designing a proper network architecture. Movement of on-body sensors, low quality and time-variant wireless links, and the demand for a reliable and fast data transmission at low energy cost are some challenging issues in WBANs. Using ultra low power wireless transceivers to reduce power consumption causes a limited transmission range. This implies that a multi-hop protocol is a promising design choice. This paper proposes a multi-hop protocol for human body health monitoring. The protocol is robust against frequent changes of the network topology due to posture changes, and variation of wireless link quality. A technique for adapting the transmit power of sensor nodes at run-time allows to optimize power consumption while ensuring a reliable outgoing link for every node in the network and avoiding network disconnection.
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paper_title: 1 Energy Comparison and Optimization of Wireless Body-Area Network Technologies

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Wireless body-area networks (WBANs) have revolutionized the way mobile and wearable computers communicate with their users and I/O devices. We investigate an energy-efficient wireless device driver for low-duty peripherals, sensors and other I/O devices employed in a WBAN to communicate with a more powerful central device. We present an extensive comparative study of two popular WBAN technologies, 802.15.1 (Bluetooth) and 802.15.4 (ZigBee), in terms of design cost, performance, and energy efficiency. We discuss the impact of tunable parameters of the wireless device driver on connection latency and energy consumption for both Bluetooth and ZigBee. We address dynamic resource management in higher-level protocols by investigating the trade-off between connection latency and energy consumption. We propose an energy-efficient power-down policy that utilizes the interval between consecutive connection requests for energy reduction; we study an adaptive connection latency management technique that adjusts various tunable parameters dynamically to achieve minimum connection latency without changing the energy consumption level. Our measurements and experimental results show that these techniques are very effective in reducing energy consumption while meeting connection latency requirements.
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paper_title: An Emergency Handling Scheme for Superframe-structured MAC protocols in WBAN

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Wireless body area networks (WBANs) provide medical and/or consumer electronics (CE) services within the vicinity of a human body. In a WBAN environment, immediate and reliable data transmissions during an emergency situation should be supported for medical services. In this letter, we propose a flexible emergency handling scheme for WBAN MAC protocols. The proposed scheme can be applied to superframe-structured MAC protocols such as IEEE 802.15.4 and its extended versions. In addition, our scheme can be incorporated into the current working draft for IEEE 802.15.6 standards. Extensive simulations were performed and the low latency of emergent traffics was validated.
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paper_title: Performance Study of Wireless Body Area Network in Medical Environment

paper_content:

The advanced developments in sensors and wireless communications devices have enabled the design of miniature, cost-effective, and smart physiological sensor nodes. One of the approaches in developing wearable health monitoring systems is the emerging of wireless body area network (WBAN). IEEE 802.15.4 provides low power, low data rate wireless standard in relation to medical sensor body area networks. In the current study, the star network topology of 802.15.4 standard at 2.4 GHz had been considered for body area network (BAN) configured in beacon mode. The main consideration is in the total data bits received by all the nodes at the coordinator and flight times of a data packet reaching its destination. In this paper we discussed on wireless technologies that can be used for medical applications and how they perform in a healthcare environment. The low-rate Wireless Personnel Area Network (WPAN) is being used to evaluate its suitability in medical application.
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paper_title: Wireless Body Area Networks: A Survey

paper_content:

Recent developments and technological advancements in wireless communication, MicroElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS) technology and integrated circuits has enabled low-power, intelligent, miniaturized, invasive/non-invasive micro and nano-technology sensor nodes strategically placed in or around the human body to be used in various applications, such as personal health monitoring. This exciting new area of research is called Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) and leverages the emerging IEEE 802.15.6 and IEEE 802.15.4j standards, specifically standardized for medical WBANs. The aim of WBANs is to simplify and improve speed, accuracy, and reliability of communication of sensors/actuators within, on, and in the immediate proximity of a human body. The vast scope of challenges associated with WBANs has led to numerous publications. In this paper, we survey the current state-of-art of WBANs based on the latest standards and publications. Open issues and challenges within each area are also explored as a source of inspiration towards future developments in WBANs.
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paper_title: Characteristics of on-body 802.15.4 networks

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One would expect a body-area network to have consistently good connectivity, given the relatively short distances involved. However, early experimental results suggest otherwise. This poster examines the characteristics of the links in an on-body IEEE 802.15.4 network and the factors that influence link performance. We demonstrate that node location, as well as body position, significantly affects connectivity. For example, connectivity in the sitting position tends to be much worse than standing. We will present a comprehensive evaluation including various combinations of changes in node orientation, node placement, body position, and environmental factors. Preliminary results clearly demonstrate the need for researching different radios, topologies and protocol design to make body area networks viable.
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paper_title: An energy analysis of IEEE 802.15.6 scheduled access modes

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Body Area Networks (BANs) are an emerging area of wireless personal communications. The IEEE 802.15.6 working group aims to develop a communications standard optimised for low power devices operating on, in or around the human body. IEEE 802.15.6 specifically targets low power medical application areas. The IEEE 802.15.6 draft defines two main channel access modes; contention based and contention free. This paper examines the energy lifetime performance of contention free access and in particular of periodic scheduled allocations. This paper presents an overview of the IEEE 802.15.6 and an analytical model for estimating the device lifetime. The analysis determines the maximum device lifetime for a range of scheduled allocations. It also shows that the higher the data rate of frame transfers the longer the device lifetime. Finally, the energy savings provided by block transfers are quantified and compared to immediately acknowledged alternatives.
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Title: A Review on Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) for Health Monitoring System: Implementation Protocols

Section 1: INTRODUCTION
Description 1: Introduce the concept of Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) and its significance in health monitoring systems, along with a brief overview of the paper's structure.

Section 2: WBAN Architecture
Description 2: Describe the WBAN architecture, including wireless communication technologies, standards, and the interconnection of sensing nodes for medical applications.

Section 3: Devices used in WBAN
Description 3: Discuss the various devices involved in WBAN, including the base station and central server, covering their roles and functionalities.

Section 4: Design Considerations cum requirements for WBAN
Description 4: Outline the critical design considerations and requirements for WBANs, such as non-invasiveness, reliability, robustness, low latency, and energy efficiency.

Section 5: AIM AND SCOPE OF REVIEW
Description 5: Present the primary aim of the review, focusing on the importance of MAC protocols in WBAN for efficient signal transmission and patient monitoring.

Section 6: RELATED WORKS
Description 6: Provide a literature review of existing MAC protocols for WBAN, discussing scheduled access protocols, random access protocols, and various other MAC protocols like TMAC, SMAC, and ZigBee MAC.

Section 7: Current Topology Used in WBAN
Description 7: Explain the current topologies used in WBAN, including star and multi-hop topologies, and methods of data transmission such as beacon and non-beacon modes.

Section 8: CONCLUSION AND FUTURE SCOPE
Description 8: Summarize the paper's findings, compare MAC protocols like CSMA/CA and TDMA, and propose future work directions for mitigating fading in captured signals using new MAC protocols.