A survey of wireless technologies coexistence in WBAN: analysis and open research issues

Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) is the most convenient, cost-effective, accurate, and non-invasive technology for e-health monitoring. The performance of WBAN may be disturbed when coexisting with other wireless networks. Accordingly, this paper provides a comprehensive study and in-depth analysis of coexistence issues and interference mitigation solutions in WBAN technologies. A thorough survey of state-of-the art research in WBAN coexistence issues is conducted. The survey classified, discussed, and compared the studies according to the parameters used to analyze the coexistence problem. Solutions suggested by the studies are then classified according to the followed techniques and concomitant shortcomings are identified. Moreover, the coexistence problem in WBAN technologies is mathematically analyzed and formulas are derived for the probability of successful channel access for different wireless technologies with the coexistence of an interfering network. Finally, extensive simulations are conducted using OPNET with several real-life scenarios to evaluate the impact of coexistence interference on different WBAN technologies. In particular, three main WBAN wireless technologies are considered: IEEE 802.15.6, IEEE 802.15.4, and low-power WiFi. The mathematical analysis and the simulation results are discussed and the impact of interfering network on the different wireless technologies is compared and analyzed. The results show that an interfering network (e.g., standard WiFi) has an impact on the performance of WBAN and may disrupt its operation. In addition, using low-power WiFi for WBANs is investigated and proved to be a feasible option compared to other wireless technologies.     

Network selection in cognitive radio enabled Wireless Body Area Networks

In recent years, the great interest in Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) has been aroused significantly due to the advancement in wireless communications. In wireless communication, all WBAN nodes that monitor the human body's vital functions transfer information to a central sink node, which is directly connected to a Cognitive Radio enabled Controller called CRC. To transfer this information from a CRC to an e-health server, it requires long-range wireless networks, such as UMTS, LTE, WiMAX, WiFi, and satellite internet provider. It is challenging for a CRC to select the best networks for different WBAN data traffic, such as emergency mandatory, delay sensitive, and general monitoring. This paper proposes a scheme for selecting the best network from the available networks depending on the Quality of Service(QoS) requirements for different WBAN applications. Different multiple attribute decision-making algorithms are used in the proposed scheme. Numerical results and discussion reveal that the proposed scheme is effective in making a good network selection in situations where there is a conflict among different QoS requirements for different WBAN applications.     

Self-heat controlling energy efficient OPOT routing protocol for WBAN

Wireless Networks - Recent technological advancements in miniaturization of sensor and wireless communication lead to development of Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN). It is similar to Wireless...     

A survey on wireless body area networks

The increasing use of wireless networks and the constant miniaturization of electrical devices has empowered the development of Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs). In these networks various sensors are attached on clothing or on the body or even implanted under the skin. The wireless nature of the network and the wide variety of sensors offer numerous new, practical and innovative applications to improve health care and the Quality of Life. The sensors of a WBAN measure for example the heartbeat, the body temperature or record a prolonged electrocardiogram. Using a WBAN, the patient experiences a greater physical mobility and is no longer compelled to stay in the hospital. This paper offers a survey of the concept of Wireless Body Area Networks. First, we focus on some applications with special interest in patient monitoring. Then the communication in a WBAN and its positioning between the different technologies is discussed. An overview of the current research on the physical layer, existing MAC and network protocols is given. Further, cross layer and quality of service is discussed. As WBANs are placed on the human body and often transport private data, security is also considered. An overview of current and past projects is given. Finally, the open research issues and challenges are pointed out.     

A novel nest-based scheduling method for mobile wireless body area networks

Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) comprise various sensors to monitor and collect various vital signals, such as blood pressure, pulse, heartbeat, body temperature, and blood sugar. A dense and mobile WBAN often suffers from interference, which causes serious problems, such as wasting energy and degrading throughput. In reality, not all of the sensors in WBAN need to be active at the same time. Therefore, they can be divided into different groups so that each group works in turn to avoid interference. In this paper, a Nest-Based WBAN Scheduling (NBWS) algorithm is proposed to cluster sensors of the same types in a single or multiple WBANs into different groups to avoid interference. Particularly, we borrow the graph coloring theory to schedule all groups to work using a Time Division for Multimodal Sensor (TDMS) group scheduling model. Both theoretical analysis and experimental results demonstrate that the proposed NBWS algorithm performs better in terms of frequency of collisions, transmission delay, system throughput, and energy consumption compared to the counterpart methods.     

Co-Channel Interference in Body Area Networks with Indoor Measurements at 2.4 GHz: Distance-to-Interferer is a Poor Estimate of Received Interference Power

Inter-network interference is likely to be a significant source of difficulty for wireless body area networks. Movement, proximity of networks, the large number of nodes per network and the lack of central coordination make cellular approaches to interference modeling ineffective. We examine the interference power of multiple Body Area Networks (BANs) when people move randomly within an indoor office environment. The power-loss trend over 3 m is overwhelmed by random variations in the signal power. Distance-to-interferer is a poor estimate of instantaneous received interference power, and an even less reliable estimate of instantaneous signal-to-interference ratio (SIR). We develop a lognormal statistical model for the signal-to-interference which incorporates the distance effect.     

FEELS: fuzzy based energy efficient and low SAR routing protocol for wireless body area networks

Wireless Networks - A patient's body gets exposed to RF radiation due to node data transmissions in a Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN). Therefore, in addition to energy efficiency, the adverse...     

A machine learning-based dynamic link power control in wearable sensing devices

Wireless Networks - The main research challenges on developing Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN) are related to the quality of the communication link and energy consumption. This article combines...     

Propagation Loss Measurement of Wireless Body Area Network at 2.4 GHz and 3.35 GHz Bands

The main purpose of this work is to measure and analyze the propagation loss of the Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) in frequency and time domain at two frequency bands, namely 2.4 GHz band with 80 MHz bandwidth and 3.35 GHz band with 500 MHz bandwidth. Four different scenarios (front to front, front to back, front to off-body node and back to off-body node) using many antenna´s locations on the body are used to investigate the channel response (path loss) of WBAN. It is found that the front to front channels and the front to off-body node channels have a low fading. The front to back channels and the back to off-body node channels have a high fading that can be approximated by the Distorted Rayleigh fading. Thus the WBAN range for the front to off-body node scenario is more than the range of the back to off-body node scenario.

     

ISAKA: Improved Secure Authentication and Key Agreement protocol for WBAN

Wireless Personal Communications - Internet of Things (IoT) is a revolution which has influenced the lifestyle of human. Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN)s are IoT-based applications which have a...     

A Secure Crypto Base Authentication and Communication Suite in Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) for IoT Applications

To monitor the functions of human body and their surroundings Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) is used, which are based on low powered and light weight wireless sensors devices. WBAN highly supports numerous applications but this study will focus on the security of ubiquitous healthcare applications. In E-health research monitoring the critical data in terms of security has become a major challenge as WBAN deals with various threats day by day. Therefore the design of secure and reasonably resource optimal algorithms with a robust key generation and management scheme is today’s need. There must be only authorized user’s who can have access to patient related data; otherwise it can be exploited by anyone. This proposed study is aiming to formulate the two security suite for WBAN, which comprises on KBS keys, KAISC and Hash algorithm three improved versions of key management procedures and authentication procedure respectively. Firstly the KBS Keys and improved Hashing suite which is an independent and adaptive key management and authentication scheme for improving the security of WBANs will be used, and secondly KAISC will be used for inter-sensor communication and key management security scheme. All above mentioned procedures will be suitably blend with the encryption and decryption process which will securely send the patient’s critical data to the base station and further to the concerned doctor. The novelty of work is that the proposed methodology is not only simple but also advanced and much secured procedure of key generation and management that will be further validated by the performance analysis. This technique will be beneficial for the continuous monitoring of patient’s critical data in remote areas also.     

无线体域网节能MAC协议综论(英文)

In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey of key energy-efficient Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols for Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs). At the outset, we outline the crucial attributes of a good MAC protocol for WBAN. Several sources that contribute to the energy inefficiency of WBAN are identified, and features of the various MAC protocols qualitatively compared. Then, we further investigate some representative TDMA-based energy-efficient MAC protocols for WBAN by emphasizing their strength...     

Demand aware transmission power cost optimization based on game theory and distributed learning algorithm for wireless body area network

Wireless Networks - This paper studied the issue of communication transmission power cost optimization for the personal body base station in wireless body area network (WBAN). With the limited...     

Investigation and Modeling of the UWB On-Body Propagation Channel

Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) are becoming an increasingly important part of the wireless communication system. In such a communication system various electronic devices carried by a person on his body can be connected. In this paper, we investigate the UWB body area propagation channel. The channel characterization is based on UWB on-body channel measurements. This paper describes the measurement campaign and the basic characteristics of the body area propagation channel extracted from measurement data.     

Wireless Body Area Network Combined with Satellite Communication for Remote Medical and Healthcare Applications

Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) is expected to play an important role in supporting medical and healthcare services with increased convenience and comfort. One main advantage of WBAN is that it enables automatic biosignal collection in real time which is essential in medical treatment and healthcare vigilance. To harmonize with the strong demands from both medical and healthcare societies, and information and communications technology industries, IEEE 802 Standard Committee set up a task group of TG15.6 to develop an IEEE wireless standard on WBAN. In this paper, we first review the main activities of TG15.6 with the updated status. Then, we present a prototype WBAN system that is implemented by using ultra-wideband technology. Multi-hop mechanism is adopted to guarantee reliable connection. Finally, we describe an experimental system that uses the developed WBAN system by combining with satellite communication in supporting remote medical treatment and healthcare. In case of less of medical resources such as in emergency, in rural or isolated areas, such a system is important in sending the corresponding biosignal to a remote hospital in real time to help patient management. The relative delay of WBAN data delivery via satellite is measured which is dependent on the satellite link capacity.     

Joint optimization of power control and time slot allocation for wireless body area networks via deep reinforcement learning

Wireless Networks - E-healthcare system based on wireless body area network (WBAN) promises to produce potential benefits in health-care industry. A major issue of such an on-body networked system...     

An Efficient Data Delivery Scheme in WBAN to Deal with Shadow Effect due to Postural Mobility

The body movement and change in posture exhibit high mobility in sensor nodes which causes shadowing in the Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN). Due to this, the connectivity between the nodes in WBAN is affected which further causes failure in data delivery. This article presents a MAC protocol in WBAN to deal with the problem of data delivery due to body movement and postural mobility. It uses an Improved Initial Centroid K-means clustering technique for classification of various human body postures followed by back propagation neural network as a classifier to recognize human body posture. This article proposes a posture aware dynamic data delivery (PA-DDD) protocol to deliver data dynamically. The PA-DDD protocol can be used under varying speed walking scenario. The simulation results show that it prolongs the network lifetime and is energy efficient.

     

A class-E power amplifier for wireless biomedical systems

This letter presents the design, implementation and experimental results of a class-E power amplifier (PA) suitable for wireless biomedical sensor nodes (WBSNs) integrated into a wireless body area network (WBAN). A self-biased inverter is used as a preamplifier stage to provide a 50 %-duty-cycle square wave to drive the class-E PA. The design (PA with the preamplifier), which is fabricated in a 0.18-μm CMOS technology, achieves 40.2 % drain efficiency while output power is 14.7 dBm at 433 MHz under 1.2-V supply, as demonstrated by the experimental results.     

UWB技术及其在家庭网络中的应用

超宽带(Ultra Wideband,UWB)技术是近几年发展起来的一项十分有潜力的无线通信技术,正是由于其高性能,低成本的无线数据通信能力,成为实现无限个人局域网的富有竞争力的技术之一.家庭网络无线系统引入频谱利用率高效的UWB技术,可提供具有灵活性和移动性的宽带无线接入.文章依据超宽带技术的主要原理和特点,讨论了该技术在家庭网络中应用的优势和实现,使得UWB技术具备了更广泛的应用.     

Analyzing and Optimizing Cooperative Communication for in Vivo WBAN

Wireless Personal Communications - The emerging Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) has a great potential to strengthen health care sector, as it paves ways for the development of new services and...