Wireless Body Area Network and Healthcare Monitoring System

Abstract

Nowadays, interests in Healthcare Monitoring System (HMS) based on Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) have grown considerably due to the increasing aging population. HMS expected to reduce healthcare expenses by enabling the continuous monitoring of patient health remotely during their daily activities. From a medical point of view, WBAN will emerge as a key technology in providing real-time health monitoring and diagnoses of many life threatening diseases. Accordingly, several studies have been done in this area and already various journal and conference papers focusing either on WBAN or on healthcare services. Nevertheless, there is no extensive coverage on the HMS based on WBAN. This tutorial will focus on the WBAN in terms of emerging wireless technologies (supporting infrastructure and technology), HMS architecture and its applications (Continuous Monitoring and Assisted Living) and challenge design issues related to WBAN (PHY, MAC and routing layers as well as security, mobility and patient localization) and HMS (services). Furthermore, this tutorial can be considered as a deep technical overview of the state-of-the-art in the WBAN and HMS fields.