Body Area Network for Ubiquitous Healthcare Applications: Theory and Implementation

Excerpt

With recent advances in wireless communication, low-power miniaturized sensors and semiconductor technologies, the sensor networks have become the integral part of ubiquitous healthcare systems. These networks can be used to provide remote health monitoring for a long period of time with real-time feedback to the hospital. For example, a set of intelligent and low-power sensors can be seamlessly integrated in/on a human body to create an autonomous sensor network called Body Area Network (BAN). The BAN can be used to stream biological information from the human body and transmit it over a long distance to a remote server for diagnostic recommendations. Some applications include diagnoses and treatment of many diseases including myocardial infarction, gastrointestinal tract, cancer detection, asthma, diabetes, and other health problems. Compared to traditional sensor networks, BANs face additional research challenges including signal propagation in/around a human body, power scavenging issues, fault tolerance, mobility, reliable Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols, Quality of Service (QoS), biocompatibility and security. …