Design Of Wireless Body Area Networks Research Articles

A prioritized traffic scheduling with load balancing in wireless body area networks

The evolution of wireless body area network (WBAN) has changed the human life for its applications in the field of healthcare, fitness, entertainment and sports etc. However, two of the major challenges in the design of WBAN are energy efficiency and guaranteeing QoS. The load balance of different packet queues in a WBAN plays important role in design of energy efficient and reliable system. In this paper, we propose a Traffic Prioritized Load Balanced Scheduling (TPLBS) algorithm for load balancing in different priority queues in wireless body area networks based on IEEE 802.15.6 model. The main objective of this paper is to minimize packet drop in the queues so that throughput of WBAN can be improved. In this case we consider both priority and location from which the packet received, so that no packet should wait for a long time in the assigned queue to be transmitted to Access Point. The proposed method is simulated using Castalia to study and compare its performance with its counterparts. The simulation results reveal that the proposed protocol works better than the existing methods in terms of delay, throughput and energy efficiency.

HPSO-SA: hybrid particle swarm optimization-simulated annealing algorithm for relay node selection in wireless body area networks

In the modern world, wireless body area networks (WBANs) play an essential role in psychological and biomedical applications. The use of WBANs in medical applications is limited due to various issues related to the sensors, viz., irregularity in data production, replacement and recharging of their batteries and the energy consumed by the networks. This manuscript addresses how these problems can be solved along with optimization of the energy consumption through efficient design of the system by applying routing protocols and heuristic-based optimization algorithms. In this paper, the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is a heuristic search algorithm that relies on an upgrade mechanism of the velocity and position of swarms. Although PSO has excellent exploration capability in global search, it becomes quickly stuck in local minima. To enhance the local search function of the current PSO algorithm, a simulated annealing (SA) algorithm has been incorporated in the exploitation phase. The newly developed hybrid PSO-SA (hPSO-SA) algorithm is validated with other state-of-the-art nature-inspired algorithms on eighteen benchmarks and five real engineering design problems. The statistical results of the proposed hPSO-SA algorithm are promising and indicate very good efficiency. The paper also aims at the application of the proposed algorithm to the WBAN design problem for minimization of the energy consumption through better selection of the relay node. The proposed hPSO-SA algorithm outperforms twelve other metaheuristic algorithms, taking hybrid variants for comparison.

An adaptive cuckoo search based algorithm for placement of relay nodes in wireless body area networks

The evolution of wireless body area networks (WBAN) has changed the human life for its applications in the field of healthcare, fitness, entertainment and sports etc. However, two of the major challenges in the design of WBAN are energy efficiency and connectivity. The placement of relay nodes in a wireless body area network (WBAN) plays an important role in design of energy efficient and reliable WBAN. This problem is a joint problem of data routing and placement of relay nodes and formulated as a linear integer programming model. The main objective of the problem is to minimize the cost of relay nodes, energy consumption and distributing the loads uniformly on the relay nodes. Considering the hardness of the problem, we propose an adaptive cuckoo search based algorithm which uses an efficient fitness function and an adaptive step size proportional to the fitness function for placement of relay nodes. The set of relay nodes obtained by our proposed adaptive cuckoo search algorithm compared with cuckoo search as well as other state of the art algorithms via simulation results. The simulation results reveal that the proposed algorithm not only consumes less energy than its counterparts but also distributes the load evenly on the relay nodes. We consider two different postures of the body with 13 biosensors placed in fixed positions and 50–100 candidate sites for placement of relay nodes. Furthermore, we also consider 80 biosensors randomly deployed in a rectangular area with 50–300 candidate sites to study the scalability of our algorithm.

Improvement of WBAN performances by a hybrid model: design and evaluation of a novel inter-MAC layer exploited in medical applications

The main idea of this paper is essentially motivated by the need to set up a smooth transition towards the IEEE 802.15.6 standard, which is doomed to take over versus IEEE 802.15.4 standard in the future, which is of a great interest. In this paper, since IEEE 802.15.4 is more efficient for sensors with minimum data rate requirement, for sensors enquiring high data rates, the use of IEEE 802.15.6 is more advantageous, whence our contribution aims to improve the wireless body area networks (WBANs) performance by combining both IEEE 802.15.4 and IEEE 802.15.6 advantages in one hybrid WBAN design. A new design so called the inter-MAC layer is suggested, which is located between the dependent-technology MAC layers and upper protocols layers, playing the role of a smart communication bridge. Ultimately, a comparative evaluation study is conducted between the two combined models (i.e., IEEE 802.15.4 and IEEE 802.15.6) with the new hybrid design, which led to a considerable improvement in terms of the lifetime and the reliability.

Receive diversity based transmission data rate optimization for improved network lifetime and delay efficiency of Wireless Body Area Networks.

Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) has become the emerging technology due to its ability to provide intelligent and cost-effective healthcare monitoring solution. The biological sensors used in WBAN are energy-constrained and required to be functional for a longer duration. Also, the sensed data should be communicated in reasonable time. Therefore, network lifetime and delay have become the primary concerns in the design of WBAN. In this paper, Receive Diversity based Transmission Data Rate Optimization (RDTDRO) scheme is proposed to improve the network lifetime and delay efficiency of Multi level-Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (M-QAM) based WBAN. In the proposed RDTDRO scheme, minimum energy consumption is ensured by optimizing the transmission data rate with respect to a given transmission distance and number of receive antennas while satisfying the Bit Error Rate (BER) requirements. The performance of proposed RDTDRO is analyzed in terms of network lifetime and delay difference and is compared with conventional Baseline and Rate optimized schemes. The results show that at a transmission distance of 0.3 m, the proposed RDTDRO scheme with a receive diversity order of 4 achieves 1.30 times and 1.27 times improvement in network lifetime over conventional Baseline and Rate optimized schemes respectively. From the results, it is also evident that at a transmission distance of 0.3 m, the proposed RDTDRO scheme with a receive diversity order of 4 is delay efficient as it achieves delay difference of 0.75 μs and 0.29 μs over conventional Baseline and Rate optimized schemes respectively.

Security Analysis of Medical Devices within Wireless Body Area Networks and Mobile Health Applications

Body Area Networks (BAN) consisting of medical devices that interact with human body have been developed in accordance with technical developments in healthcare area. Providing this, devices automatically measuring human blood pressure or insulin value and feeding data into hospital management systems have started being used in daily-life. These medical devices help to improve health status of patients, however they are also subject to risks caused by unauthorized intervention. In this study, medical devices used in Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN) and mobile health applications have been analyzed according to different security requirements and aspects. Initially, all threats and risks faced by remotely accessible medical devices in WBAN have been identified by applying WBAN threat modeling. Security analysis and penetration testing of mobile health applications running on smart devices have been conducted. In addition, secure architecture principles for WBAN design have been specified in detail.

Characterization of the On-Body Path Loss at 2.45 GHz and Energy Efficient WBAN Design for Dairy Cows

Wireless body area networks (WBANs) provide promising applications in the healthcare monitoring of dairy cows. The characterization of the path loss (PL) between on-body nodes constitutes an important step in the deployment of a WBAN. In this paper, the PL between nodes placed on the body of a dairy cow was determined at 2.45 GHz. Finite-difference time domain simulations with two half-wavelength dipoles placed 20 mm above a cow model were performed using a 3-D electromagnetic solver. Measurements were conducted on a live cow to validate the simulation results. Excellent agreement between measurements and simulations was achieved and the obtained PL values as a function of the transmitter–receiver separation were well fitted by a lognormal PL model with a PL exponent of 3.1 and a PL at reference distance (10 cm) of 44 dB. As an application, the packet error rate (PER) and the energy efficiency of different WBAN topologies for dairy cows (i.e., single-hop, multihop, and cooperative networks) were investigated. The analysis results revealed that exploiting multihop and cooperative communication schemes decrease the PER and increase the optimal payload packet size. The analysis results revealed that exploiting multihop and cooperative communication schemes increase the optimal payload packet size and improve the energy efficiency by 30%.

THE ROLE OF CROSS-LAYERED DESIGNS IN WIRELESS BODY AREA NETWORK

With recent advancement, Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) plays an important role to detect various diseases of a patient in advance and informs the medical team about the life threatening situation. WBAN comprises of small intelligent Biomedical sensors which are implanted inside patient body and attached on the surface of a patient to monitor different vital signs, namely; respiratory rate, ECG, EMG, temperature, blood pressure, glucose. The routing layer of WBAN has the same challenging problems as similarly faced in WSN but the unique challenge is the temperature-rise during monitoring of vital signs and data transmission. IEEE 802.15.6 MAC Superframe of WBAN is different from IEEE 802.15.4 MAC of WSN and provides channels to emergency and non-emergency data for transmission. As similarly seen in WSN, PHY layer of IEEE 802.15.4 and IEEE 802.15.6 provide various modulation techniques for data transmission. The purpose of this study is to familiar with routing layer, MAC layer and PHY layer in the cross-layer design of WBAN.

Development and Simulation of Enhanced Key Management Scheme for WBANs

The design and deployment of Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) have recently resulted from the use of sensors to measure the biometrics and movements of the human body. The development of such networks is imperative for modern telemedicine and e-health. Since WBANs are dealing with very sensitive information (i.e., medical data which has a direct impact on human life), security is an essential part of WBANs design. Indeed, key management plays pivotal role in ensuring security requirements in WBAN.
 In this paper, an enhanced version of a biometric-based distributed key management scheme is introduced. This scheme is designed for use in WBAN scenarios. It makes use of key refreshment schedules and distributes key management responsibility among all nodes in a WBAN in a fair manner. The scheme supports the use of biometric measurements to generate symmetric keys in WBANs via facilitating the work of biometric random number generators that can extract a random bit sequence from biological data to generate symmetric keys. A general description of the development of this scheme is given along with all phases of its operation. Furthermore, simulation results are presented with security analysis related to the resistance of the proposed scheme against some possible attacks.

A Survey on Wireless Body Area Networks: Technologies and Design Challenges

Interest in Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) has increased significantly in recent years thanks to the advances in microelectronics and wireless communications. Owing to the very stringent application requirements in terms of reliability, energy efficiency, and low device complexity, the design of these networks requires the definition of new protocols with respect to those used in general purpose wireless sensor networks. This motivates the effort in research activities and in standardisation process of the last years. This survey paper aims at reporting an overview of WBAN main applications, technologies and standards, issues in WBANs design, and evolutions. Some case studies are reported, based on both real implementation and experimentation on the field, and on simulations. These results have the aim of providing useful insights for WBAN designers and of highlighting the main issues affecting the performance of these kind of networks.

Optimal design of energy-efficient and cost-effective wireless body area networks

Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) represent one of the most promising approaches for improving the quality of life, allowing remote patient monitoring and other healthcare applications. The deployment of a WBAN is a critical issue that impacts both the network lifetime and the total energy consumed by the network. This work investigates the optimal design of wireless body area networks by studying the joint data routing and relay positioning problem, in order to increase the network lifetime. To this end, we propose a mixed integer linear programming model, the Energy-Aware WBAN Design model, which optimizes the number and location of relays to be deployed and the data routing towards the sink, minimizing both the network installation cost and the energy consumed by wireless sensors and relays. We solve the proposed model in both realistic WBAN scenarios and general topologies, and compare the model performance to the most notable approaches proposed in the literature. Numerical results demonstrate that our model (1) provides a good tradeoff between the energy consumption and the number of installed relays, and (2) designs energy-efficient and cost-effective WBANs in a short computation time, thus representing an interesting framework for the dynamic WBAN design problem.