Implantable Body Sensor Networks Research Articles

An Artificial Neural Network Framework for Gait-Based Biometrics.

As the popularity of wearable and the implantable body sensor network (BSN) devices increases, there is a growing concern regarding the data security of such power-constrained miniaturized medical devices. With limited computational power, BSN devices are often not able to provide strong security mechanisms to protect sensitive personal and health information, such as one's physiological data. Consequently, many new methods of securing wireless body area networks have been proposed recently. One effective solution is the biometric cryptosystem (BCS) approach. BCS exploits physiological and behavioral biometric traits, including face, iris, fingerprints, electrocardiogram, and photoplethysmography. In this paper, we propose a new BCS approach for securing wireless communications for wearable and implantable healthcare devices using gait signal energy variations and an artificial neural network framework. By simultaneously extracting similar features from BSN sensors using our approach, binary keys can be generated on demand without user intervention. Through an extensive analysis on our BCS approach using a gait dataset, the results have shown that the binary keys generated using our approach have high entropy for all subjects. The keys can pass both National Institute of Standards and Technology and Dieharder statistical tests with high efficiency. The experimental results also show the robustness of the proposed approach in terms of the similarity of intraclass keys and the discriminability of the interclass keys.

Potential of Wake-Up Radio-Based MAC Protocols for Implantable Body Sensor Networks (IBSN)-A Survey.

With the advent of nano-technology, medical sensors and devices are becoming highly miniaturized. Consequently, the number of sensors and medical devices being implanted to accurately monitor and diagnose a disease is increasing. By measuring the symptoms and controlling a medical device as close as possible to the source, these implantable devices are able to save lives. A wireless link between medical sensors and implantable medical devices is essential in the case of closed-loop medical devices, in which symptoms of the diseases are monitored by sensors that are not placed in close proximity of the therapeutic device. Medium Access Control (MAC) is crucial to make it possible for several medical devices to communicate using a shared wireless medium in such a way that minimum delay, maximum throughput, and increased network life-time are guaranteed. To guarantee this Quality of Service (QoS), the MAC protocols control the main sources of limited resource wastage, namely the idle-listening, packet collisions, over-hearing, and packet loss. Traditional MAC protocols designed for body sensor networks are not directly applicable to Implantable Body Sensor Networks (IBSN) because of the dynamic nature of the radio channel within the human body and the strict QoS requirements of IBSN applications. Although numerous MAC protocols are available in the literature, the majority of them are designed for Body Sensor Network (BSN) and Wireless Sensor Network (WSN). To the best of our knowledge, there is so far no research paper that explores the impact of these MAC protocols specifically for IBSN. MAC protocols designed for implantable devices are still in their infancy and one of their most challenging objectives is to be ultra-low-power. One of the technological solutions to achieve this objective so is to integrate the concept of Wake-up radio (WuR) into the MAC design. In this survey, we present a taxonomy of MAC protocols based on their use of WuR technology and identify their bottlenecks to be used in IBSN applications. Furthermore, we present a number of open research challenges and requirements for designing an energy-efficient and reliable wireless communication protocol for IBSN.

Guest Editorial Body Sensor Networks

This special issue includes four papers that expand on work presented at the 12th BSN Conference, held in Cambridge, MA, 2015. Since 2004, the annual International Conference on Wearable and Implantable Body Sensor Networks (BSN) has provided a forum for researchers and leaders from academia, government, and industry to share technical advances and new initiatives in body-worn sensors and mobile devices.

Characterisation of a knee-joint energy harvester powering a wireless communication sensing node

Human-based energy harvesters are attractive as sustainable replacements for batteries to power wearable or implantable devices and body sensor networks. In the work presented here, a knee-joint energy harvester (KEH) was introduced to power a customer-built wireless communication sensing node (WCSN). The KEH used a mechanical plucking technique to provide sufficient frequency up-conversion—from a few Hz to the resonant frequency of the KEH—so as to generate the high power required. It was actuated by a knee-joint simulator, which reproduced the knee-joint motion of human gaits at a walking frequency of 0.9 Hz. The energy generated was first stored in a reservoir capacitor and then released to the WCSN in a burst mode with the help of an energy aware interface. The WCSN was deployed with a three-axis accelerometer, a temperature sensor, and a light detector for data sensing. A Jennic microcontroller was utilised to collect and transmit the measured data to a base station placed at a distance of 4 m. The energy generation by the KEH and the energy distribution in the system was characterised in real time by an in-house-built set-up. The results showed that the KEH generated an average power output of 1.76 mW when powering the WCSN. After charging the reservoir capacitor for 28.4 s, the KEH can power the WCSN for a 46 ms period every 1.25 s. The results also clearly illustrated how the energy generated by the KEH was distributed in the system and highlighted the importance of using a high performance power management approach to improve the performance of the whole system.

Evaluation of MAC Protocols with Wake-up Radio for Implantable Body Sensor Networks

The use of wireless communication in implantable medical devices is growing rapidly due to an increasing demand for sophisticated health-care. Recently, a new type of sensor network called Implantable Body Sensor Network (IBSN) has emerged. IBSN is a network of implantable medical sensors and devices which can communicate with each other or to a base station using radio-frequency (RF) link. Wireless communication in IBSN must be extremely reliable and energy-efñcient in order to provide a long-term safe operability. The underlying MAC protocol in an RF communication is an important feature which directly affects reliability and energy-efficiency. To overeóme the high power demand of wireless communication in IBSN, the concept of wake-up radio was introduced. Some MAC protocols that can make use of wake-up radio have been proposed. This paper analyzes three of the existing MAC protocols with the wake-up feature that are suitable for IBSN, and emphasizes their strengths and weaknesses. Simulations show that performance of MAC protocols with wake-up radio varíes with different access mechanisms. Finally, we present an overview of MAC protocols with wake-up radio and discuss their practicality in implantable medical sensor networks.

Wearable and implantable wireless sensor network solutions for healthcare monitoring.

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.

A Wireless Biomedical Signal Interface System-on-Chip for Body Sensor Networks

Recent years have seen the rapid development of biosensor technology, system-on-chip design, wireless technology. and ubiquitous computing. When assembled into an autonomous body sensor network (BSN), the technologies become powerful tools in well-being monitoring, medical diagnostics, and personal connectivity. In this paper, we describe the first demonstration of a fully customized mixed-signal silicon chip that has most of the attributes required for use in a wearable or implantable BSN. Our intellectual-property blocks include low-power analog sensor interface for temperature and pH, a data multiplexing and conversion module, a digital platform based around an 8-b microcontroller, data encoding for spread-spectrum wireless transmission, and a RF section requiring very few off-chip components. The chip has been fully evaluated and tested by connection to external sensors, and it satisfied typical system requirements.

A 10.8 mW Body Channel Communication/MICS Dual-Band Transceiver for a Unified Body Sensor Network Controller

With the increasing number of portable and implantable personal health care devices, there is a strong demand to control their communication in a single wireless network. Recently, the IEEE 802.15 WBAN task group has discussed the combining of wearable and implantable body sensor networks (BSNs) [1], but no real chip implementation has been reported. In this paper, the implementation of a unified BSN as shown in Fig. 24.9.1 is described.. The unified BSN combines low-power body-channel communication (BCC) [2] and versatile medical implant communication service (MICS) [3] using a network controller located on the human body. This unified BSN has 2 main advantages over the conventional BSNs. First, the MICS band antenna shared with the BCC electrode can be attached directly to human skin to shorten the communication distances among the controller and implanted radios, relaxing their sensitivity and selectivity requirements. Second, due to low path loss of the human body channel, low-power communication is possible among the wearable devices [4]. In addition, the on-body sensors do not need external antennas because the bio-signal sensing electrode functions as the interface for data transmission.

Proteomics: characterizing the cogs in the machinery of life.

Research ArticleOpen AccessProteomics: characterizing the cogs in the machinery of life. Ernie Hood Ernie Hood Search for more papers by this author Published:1 November 2003https://doi.org/10.1289/ehp.111-a816Cited by:3AboutSectionsPDF ToolsDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InReddit FiguresReferencesRelatedDetailsCited by Rusling J, Sotzing G and Papadimitrakopoulosa F (2009) Designing nanomaterial-enhanced electrochemical immunosensors for cancer biomarker proteins, Bioelectrochemistry, 10.1016/j.bioelechem.2009.03.011, 76:1-2, (189-194), Online publication date: 1-Sep-2009. Gong J, Jensen G, Bhirde A, Xin Yu , Munge B, Patel V, Gutkind J, Rusling J, SangNyon Kim and Papadimitrakopoulos F Single-Walled Carbon-Nanotube Forest Immunosensor for Amplified Detection of Cancer Biomarkers International Workshop on Wearable and Implantable Body Sensor Networks (BSN'06), 10.1109/BSN.2006.50, 0-7695-2547-4, (203-207) Ekins S (2006) Systems-ADME/Tox: Resources and network approaches, Journal of Pharmacological and Toxicological Methods, 10.1016/j.vascn.2005.05.005, 53:1, (38-66), Online publication date: 1-Jan-2006. Vol. 111, No. 15 November 2003Metrics About Article Metrics Publication History Originally published1 November 2003Published in print1 November 2003 Financial disclosuresPDF download License information EHP is an open-access journal published with support from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Institutes of Health. All content is public domain unless otherwise noted. Note to readers with disabilities EHP strives to ensure that all journal content is accessible to all readers. However, some figures and Supplemental Material published in EHP articles may not conform to 508 standards due to the complexity of the information being presented. If you need assistance accessing journal content, please contact [email protected]. Our staff will work with you to assess and meet your accessibility needs within 3 working days.