Abstract
Wireless sensor network (WSN) technologies are considered one of the key research areas in computer science and the healthcare application industries for improving the quality of life. The purpose of this paper is to provide a snapshot of current developments and future direction of research on wearable and implantable body area network systems for continuous monitoring of patients. This paper explains the important role of body sensor networks in medicine to minimize the need for caregivers and help the chronically ill and elderly people live an independent life, besides providing people with quality care. The paper provides several examples of state of the art technology together with the design considerations like unobtrusiveness, scalability, energy efficiency, security and also provides a comprehensive analysis of the various benefits and drawbacks of these systems. Although offering significant benefits, the field of wearable and implantable body sensor networks still faces major challenges and open research problems which are investigated and covered, along with some proposed solutions, in this paper.
Highlights
Wireless sensor network (WSN) technologies have the potential to change our lifestyle with different applications in fields such as healthcare, entertainment, travel, retail, industry, dependent care and emergency management, in addition to many other areas
In this paper we focus on healthcare applications, and mainly on wearable and implantable body sensor networks
We will briefly explore some capabilities of WSN for healthcare monitoring [37] as we focus in this paper on wearable and implantable body area networks
Summary
Wireless sensor network (WSN) technologies have the potential to change our lifestyle with different applications in fields such as healthcare, entertainment, travel, retail, industry, dependent care and emergency management, in addition to many other areas. The range of wearable and implantable biomedical devices will increase significantly in the years, thanks to the improvements in micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) technology, wireless communications, and digital electronics, achieved in recent years [5]. These advances have allowed the development of low-cost, low power, multi-functional sensor nodes that are small in size and can communicate over short distances, and tiny sensor nodes, which consist of sensing, data processing, and communicating components, and to take advantage of the idea of sensor networks based on collaborative effort of a large number of nodes.
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