Wearable Wireless Body Area Networks for Medical Applications.

Carlos A Tavera,Jesús H Ortiz,Theyazn H H Aldhyani,Diego F Saavedra,Osamah I Khalaf,Jude Hemanth

doi:10.1155/2021/5574376

Abstract

In recent times, there has been a significant growth in networks known as the wireless body area networks (WBANs). A WBAN connects distributed nodes throughout the human body, which can be placed on the skin, under the skin, or on clothing and can use the human body's electromagnetic waves. An approach to reduce the size of different telecommunication equipment is constantly being sought; this allows these devices to be closer to the body or even glued and embedded within the skin without making the user feel uncomfortable or posing as a danger for the user. These networks promise new medical applications; however, these are always based on the freedom of movement and the comfort they offer. Among the advantages of these networks is that they can significantly increase user's quality of life. For example, a person can carry a WBAN with built-in sensors that calculate the user's heart rate at any given time and send these data over the internet to user's doctor. This study provides a systematic review of WBAN, describing the applications and trends that have been developed with this type of network and, in addition, the protocols and standards that must be considered.

Highlights

A wireless body area networks (WBANs) is a network built with different intelligent elements such as sensors, nodes, and actuators
A trend inclining toward the use of communication devices such as low-energy Bluetooth and WIFI can be observed owing to their great standardization and ability to connect to a mobile hub, such as those available in most smartphones. This can be attributed to the fact that most of the applications found used a hub, such as those available in most smartphones, because it allows the information to be directly loaded to a cloud service if necessary
It was found that 66% of WBAN wearable applications used Bluetooth, 17% WIFI, and only 3.5% ZigBee or NFC

Summary

Introduction

A WBAN is a network built with different intelligent elements such as sensors, nodes, and actuators This network is designed to work on the human body and its surroundings. The elements that conform the network must be highly reliable, exhibit low consumption, be operational at a high range (maximum 5 m), must be resistant to interference, and must be able to operate within a wide range of transmission speeds [1]. These networks were first incepted in the 90s at Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the hypothesis of being able to attach electrical devices to the human body.

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