Wireless Body Area Network Communication Research Articles

Multiband Antenna Design with Integrated AMC Surface and FSS Superstrate for Wireless Body Area Network Communications

Multiband Antenna Design with Integrated AMC Surface and FSS Superstrate for Wireless Body Area Network Communications

Access Control, Key Management, and Trust for Emerging Wireless Body Area Networks.

Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) are an emerging industrial technology for monitoring physiological data. These networks employ medical wearable and implanted biomedical sensors aimed at improving quality of life by providing body-oriented services through a variety of industrial sensing gadgets. The sensors collect vital data from the body and forward this information to other nodes for further services using short-range wireless communication technology. In this paper, we provide a multi-aspect review of recent advancements made in this field pertaining to cross-domain security, privacy, and trust issues. The aim is to present an overall review of WBAN research and projects based on applications, devices, and communication architecture. We examine current issues and challenges with WBAN communications and technologies, with the aim of providing insights for a future vision of remote healthcare systems. We specifically address the potential and shortcomings of various Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) architectures and communication schemes that are proposed to maintain security, privacy, and trust within digital healthcare systems. Although current solutions and schemes aim to provide some level of security, several serious challenges remain that need to be understood and addressed. Our aim is to suggest future research directions for establishing best practices in protecting healthcare data. This includes monitoring, access control, key management, and trust management. The distinguishing feature of this survey is the combination of our review with a critical perspective on the future of WBANs.

Conformal eight‐port dual band antenna with switchable radiation pattern for 5G enabled on‐body wireless communications

AbstractA novel conformal quasi‐yagi antenna and its Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) implementations for wireless body area networks (WBAN) application is reported in this letter. The antenna is developed on a 0.05 mm thin polyimide substrate making the antenna more flexible and conformal. The footprint of the proposed antenna is 35 × 35 mm with a dual dipole arm‐like structure making it resonant at 2.45 and 3.5 GHz covering the industrial scientific and medical and 5G bands for WBAN communications. The antenna is excited using a microstrip‐to‐slotline termination suitably terminated by a circular patch to realize the impedance matching. The ground plane is shaped to maintain good isolation between neighboring antennas during the eight‐element MIMO antenna development. The MIMO antennas are arranged circularly to achieve good antenna coverage along the azimuth directions. The antenna generates a tangential radiation pattern to the plane of the human body making it suitable for on‐body wireless communications. The proposed antenna offers a rotatable radiation pattern by appropriately choosing the antenna port of excitation. The proposed MIMO antenna offers an average gain of 4.5 and 5.2 dBi at 2.45 and 3.5 GHz, respectively. The MIMO antenna parameters are evaluated and presented. The calculated MIMO parameters are within the acceptable limits. Thus, the flexible nature with rotatable directional radiation patterns has made this antenna an attractive choice for on‐body communications in WBAN.

A compact triband antenna using artificial magnetic conductor for wireless body area network communicationsFront

The proliferation of the Internet of Things devices and advancements in wireless communication have fostered the growth of Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN). This research provides a triband antenna supported by a 4 × 4 Artificial Magnetic Conductor (AMC) array surface that has a low Specific Absorption Rate (SAR), a high Front to Back Ratio (FBR), and increased gain for use in wearable devices. For WBAN communications, the proposed antenna operates in the Industrial, Scientific, and Medical (2.4 GHz) band, the C (3.7–4.2 GHz), and the Wi-Fi 6E (5.925–7.125 GHz) bands. The dual-band AMC unit cell exhibits Double-Negative and angular stability behaviour at 2.45 GHz and 6.5 GHz. AMC-backed antenna achieved multiband functionality by incorporating slots into the unit cell and a defective ground structure into the antenna. The antenna was positioned 0.139λ0 above the AMC surface, which measured 0.556λ0 × 0.556λ0 × 0.013λ0 (at 2.45 GHz). The antenna exhibited good gain and return loss variations when mounted on curved surfaces. The proposed integrated design yielded substantial enhancements, as evidenced by the increase of 8.2 dBi in maximum gain, 25.2 dB in FBR, and over 93% in total efficiency. The AMC-backed antenna’s − 10 dB impedance bandwidth is 18.4%, 21.2%, and 22.3%, with corresponding frequency ranges of 2.25–2.66 GHz, 3.66–4.53 GHz, and 5.9–7.35 GHz. Additionally, the AMC surface showed an average reduction in SAR of 93.22%. Vector Network Analyzer and Anechoic chamber measurements proved simulation accuracy. As a result, it is strongly recommended that the integrated antenna design be acknowledged in WBAN communications.

A lightweight and secure multilayer authentication scheme for wireless body area networks in healthcare system

<span lang="EN-US">Wireless body area networks (WBANs) have lately been combined with different healthcare equipment to monitor patients' health status and communicate information with their healthcare practitioners. Since healthcare data often contain personal and sensitive information, it is important that healthcare systems have a secure way for users to log in and access resources and services. The lack of security and presence of anonymous communication in WBANs can cause their operational failure. There are other systems in this area, but they are vulnerable to offline identity guessing attacks, impersonation attacks in sensor nodes, and spoofing attacks in hub node. Therefore, this study provides a secure approach that overcomes these issues while maintaining comparable efficiency in wireless sensor nodes and mobile phones. To conduct the proof of security, the proposed scheme uses the Scyther tool for formal analysis and the Canetti–Krawczyk (CK) model for informal analysis. Furthermore, the suggested technique outperforms the existing symmetric and asymmetric encryption-based schemes.</span>

Enabling Secure Communication in Wireless Body Area Networks with Heterogeneous Authentication Scheme.

Thanks to the widespread availability of Fifth Generation (5G) wireless connectivity, it is now possible to provide preventative or proactive healthcare services from any location and at any time. As a result of this technological improvement, Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) have emerged as a new study of research in the field of healthcare in recent years. WBANs, on the one hand, intend to gather and monitor data from the human body and its surroundings; on the other hand, biomedical devices and sensors interact through an open wireless channel, making them exposed to a range of cyber threats. However, WBANs are a heterogeneous-based system; heterogeneous cryptography is necessary, in which the transmitter and receiver can employ different types of public key cryptography. This article proposes an improved and efficient heterogeneous authentication scheme with a conditional privacy-preserving strategy that provides secure communication in WBANs. In the proposed scheme, we employed certificateless cryptography on the client side and Identity-Based Cryptography on the receiver side. The proposed scheme employs Hyperelliptic Curve Cryptography (HECC), a more advanced variation of Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC). HECC achieves the same level of security with a smaller key size and a more efficient approach than its counterpart methods. The proposed scheme not only meets the security and privacy standards of WBANs but also enhances efficiency in terms of computation and communication costs, according to the findings of the security and performance analysis.

Trust-Based Data Communication in Wireless Body Area Network for Healthcare Applications

A subset of Wireless Sensor Networks, Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN) is an emerging technology. WBAN is a collection of tiny pieces of wireless body sensors with small computational capability, communicating short distances using ZigBee or Bluetooth, an application mainly in the healthcare industry like remote patient monitoring. The small piece of sensor monitors health factors like body temperature, pulse rate, ECG, heart rate, etc., and communicates to the base station or central coordinator for aggregation or data computation. The final data is communicated to remote monitoring devices through the internet or cloud service providers. The main challenge for this technology is energy consumption and secure communication within the network and the possibility of attacks executed by malicious nodes, creating problems for the network. This system proposes a suitable trust model for secure communication in WBAN based on node trust and data trust. Node trust is calculated using direct trust calculation and node behaviours. The data trust is calculated using consistent data success and data aging. The performance is compared with an existing protocol like Trust Evaluation (TE)-WBAN and Body Area Network (BAN)-Trust which is not a cryptographic technique. The protocol is lightweight and has low overhead. The performance is rated best for Throughput, Packet Delivery Ratio, and Minimum delay. With extensive simulation on-off attacks, Selfishness attacks, sleeper attacks, and Message suppression attacks were prevented.

Circularly polarized wearable antenna with low specific absorption rate and high gain based on artificial magnetic conductor

Aiming at wearable electronic equipment in wireless body area network communication, we propose a circularly polarized wearable antenna based on artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) for the problem of unreliable data transmission of linearly polarized wearable antenna and reduction of transmission distance due to the low gain of antenna. The AMC of in-phase reflection reflects the backward radiation to the top to reduce the damage of the antenna to human body. And the polarization direction of the reflected wave reflected through AMC is the same as that of the main direction, which makes the radiation performance of the antenna improved. Meanwhile, the antenna is flexible and lightweight due to the use of flexible polyimide and graphene films as the substrate and conductor materials. The antenna was also simulated and the prototype was fabricated and tested. The simulation results show that the working bandwidth covers 2.4–2.48 GHz, and the peak gain is 8.09 dBi. The peak specific absorption rate of 1 g and 10 g of human tissue at an input power of 350 mW is 1.48 W kg−1 and 0.65 W kg−1, respectively, which meets the safety standards.

An ultra‐thin flexible four port MIMO antenna for WBAN communications

AbstractThis letter reports the design of a quasi Yagi‐Uda Antenna developed on an ultra‐thin flexible material for wireless body area networks (WBAN). The proposed planar Yagi‐Uda antenna operates at 2.45 GHz ISM band for medical applications. The microstrip line to slot line transition with circular geometry is used to obtain the necessary impedance matching. The proposed antenna has a footprint of 42 × 36 mm with a profile height of 0.05 mm. The quasi Yagi‐Uda antenna with a set of two directors exhibits 5% bandwidth with a unidirectional radiation pattern and a peak gain of 4 dBi. A four‐port multiple input and multiple output (MIMO) antenna is later developed to meet the diversity requirements of body‐centric communications. To improve the front‐to‐back ratio and specific absorption rate, the MIMO antenna is backed by a metallic reflector. The on‐body performance of the antenna are studied and the results are presented. The estimated envelope correlation coefficient is less than 0.4, apparent diversity gain is greater than 8 dB and effective diversity gain is above 7.2 dB for the proposed four‐element MIMO antenna. The prototype antenna is fabricated and the results indicate that the proposed antenna is suitable for WBAN communications.

Network Design Issues in Wireless Body Area Network

This paper presents a survey on various aspects of Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) and its utility in healthcare system. Along with applications of WBAN in healthcare different areas of research with other prospective opportunities and prominent challenges are also discussed. Development in the field of wireless communication, particularly in the field of Personal Area Network and mobile networks, has lead to development of mobile healthcare system. As WBAN essentially consist of body sensors to sense various physical properties related to health. Apart from applications of WBAN, communication in WBAN and other important aspects like security, scalability are discussed. Some of the other important issues are physical and MAC layer design and network protocols being analysed.

Efficient and lightweight protocol for anti-jamming communications in wireless body area networks

Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) have emerged as a new technology in healthcare. However, wireless interfaces make it more vulnerable to acute physical layer attacks. Indeed, jamming attacks on WBAN communications have become a significant challenge to address. This paper proposes a new security protocol against jamming attacks in healthcare and medical environments, combining Frequency-Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS) and Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS), termed CFD-BD: Chaotic FH/DS Based Dissimulation. Our proposition is based on both the chaotic signal and dissimulation. The combination of these two techniques allows us to ensure an effective solution against jamming attacks and meet the challenges resulting from the constraints related to the limited resources of WBANs. The simulation results indicate that our proposal is lightweight in communication load, complexity, and storage.

Design and implementation of energy-aware cross-layer routing protocol for wearable body area network

PurposeA wireless body area network (WBAN) plays a crucial role in the health-care domain. With the emergence of technologies like the internet of things, there is increased usage of WBAN for providing quality health services. With wearable devices and sensors associated with human body, patient’s vital signs are captured and sent to doctor. The WBAN has number of sensor nodes that are resource constrained. The communications among the nodes are very crucial as human health information is exchanged. The purpose of this paper aims to have Quality of Service (QoS) with energy aware and control overhead aware. Maximizing network lifetime is also essential for the improved quality in services. There are many existing studies on QoS communications in WBAN.Design/methodology/approachIn this paper, with the aim of energy-efficient WBAN for QoS, a cross-layer routing protocol is designed and implemented. A cross-layer routing protocol that is ad hoc on-demand distance vector (AODV)-based, energy and control overhead-aware (AODV-ECOA) is designed and implemented for energy-efficient routing in WBAN. The cross-layer design that involves multiple layers of open systems interconnection reference model, which will improve energy efficiency and thus QoS.FindingsImplementation is simulated using the network simulator tool, i.e. NS-2. The proposed cross-layer routing protocol AODV-ECOA shows least bandwidth requirement by control packets, leading to less control overhead, highest packet delivery ratio and energy efficiency. The experimental results revealed that AODV-ECOA shows better performance over existing protocols such as AODV and POLITIC.Originality/valueAn efficient control overhead reduction algorithm is proposed for reducing energy consumption further and improves performance of WBAN communications to realize desired QoS.

Optimized Reception Sensitivity of WBAN Sensors Exploiting Network Coding and Modulation Techniques in an Advanced NB-IoT

The sensitivity of the maximum useable data is the most significant characteristic that describes the quality of the Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) of Medical sensors (MS) receivers. It becomes the most important performance factor in mobile wireless communication networks, particularly wireless body area networks (WBAN). Our interest is in level sensitivity using modulation techniques and subcarrier spacing(SS) to achieve good Bit Error Rate (BER) performance, throughput, and power efficiencies for WBAN communication Systems in an advanced NB-IoT. We propose an efficient coding technique using Linear Network Coding (LNC) to improve sensitivity by considering several factors without affecting the human body. We also present an experimentally analyzed overview of the reception sensibility. Our research has revealed that the receiver sensitivity (minimum detectable signal level) and throughput of the proposed approach (PA) are much better than the conventional approach (CA), achieving more than 14.3% and 55%, respectively, compared to the CA. Also, the PA has improved the modulation types by approximately 45% to provide more throughput and reliability.

A Perspective Review of Security Challenges in Body Area Networks for Healthcare Applications.

Body area network (BAN) connects sensors and actuators to the human body in order to collect patient’s information and transmitting it to doctors in a confined space with limited users. wireless body area network (WBAN) is derived from wireless sensor networks (WSN) and enables to transfer of the patient's information with a wide range of communication due to the limitations of the wired body area network. It plays a vital role in healthcare monitoring, healthcare systems, medical field, sports field, and multimedia communication. Sensors and actuators lead to high energy consumption due to their tiny size. WBAN facilitates in securely storing patient information and transmitting it to the doctor without data loss at a specific time. This review examines and summarizes methodological approaches in WBAN relating to security, safety, reliability, and the fastest transmission. Flying body area networks (FBAN) utilizing unmanned aerial vehicles for data transmission are recommended to promote rapid and secure communication in WBAN. FBAN improve the security, scalability, and speed in order to transmit patient’s information to the doctor due to high mobility.

Design of High Gain Wearable Antenna Based on Wireless Body Area Network Communications

This paper presents a wearable antenna for Wireless Body Area Network communication. A 3×3 array artificial magnetic conductor structure (AMC) is loaded at the bottom of the antenna to reduce the backward radiation and improve the antenna gain. The simulated results show that the antenna can completely meet the working requirements in the bent state. After the addition of AMC array, the maximum gain reaches 7.53 dB, and the SAR value of human tissue can be reduced by about 94%. In addition, we have also processed and tested the antenna. The measured results are in good agreement with the simulated results, and its working bandwidth includes the low-frequency band of the ISM frequency band for WBAN communication, which can meet the working requirements of the antenna.

Re-AuTh: Lightweight Re-Authentication with Practical Key Management for Wireless Body Area Networks

The development in wireless body area networks (WBANs) has facilitated a growth in electronic health in terms of quality and efficiency. Telemonitoring systems observe human vital signs without the need for a patient to be present using WBANs. The data sensitivity of WBAN, mobile users and public channels poses a critical challenge to security and privacy in order to prevent unauthorized access to vital health data. Several solutions have been suggested to ensure secure and effective communications in WBANs; nonetheless, these methods tend to have drawbacks, such as efficiency overhead and protection vulnerabilities. This paper proposes a lightweight authentication and also provides a protocol for re-authentication (Re-AuTh). The proposed “Re-AuTh” utilizes identification and authorization tokens to assist the application provider in authenticating and further to authorize medical users. Such tokens also provide a way to achieve effective key management. The Scyther simulation shows that the proposed Re-AuTh has no security vulnerabilities and the informal security analysis further ensures protection of all related possible threats. The performance comparisons with related solutions showed that the proposed Re-AuTh effectively provides security services for WBAN in the medical environment and greatly reduces computation costs at the user side.

Relay-based Communications in WBANs

Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) constitute an emerging technology in the field of health care that makes health monitoring possible from one’s home itself. WBANs open many challenges by placing sensors on/inside human bodies for collecting various health-related information. Unlike traditional Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), communication in WBANs suffers from high channel fading and attenuation due to human body fat. Therefore, relay-based communication with data forwarding techniques is used to handle link failures and poor network connectivity. Accordingly, in this survey article, we present a comprehensive study of relay-based communication mechanisms in WBANs. We begin with a brief look at the multi-tiered architecture of WBANs, how direct communication works, and how relay-based communication is different. Subsequently, we present a detailed review of relay node selection approaches, which, in turn, also affects how a WBAN performs. In this context, we also look at the unique quality of service (QoS) demands of WBANs and how they can be assured.

A robust guaranteed time slots allotment scheme for real-time and reliable communication in WBANs

The ever-increasing aging population and expenditure related to healthcare, consequently demand the requirement for a state-of-the-art healthcare system. Wireless body area networks (WBANs) are the potential contender for this requirement. The IEEE 802.15.4 standard is considered a suitable protocol for WBANs and its beacon-enabled mode supports real-time traffic through guaranteed time slots (GTS) feature. Nevertheless, it suffers from reliability and timeliness guarantees. To address this issue, this work advocates a robust guaranteed time slots allotment scheme (RGAS) that consists of two phases, viz.: 1) determination of the severity of sensor data using fuzzy inference system; 2) dynamic allocation of available GTS slots to the contending nodes. Through simulation results, we demonstrate that the proposed RGAS significantly outperforms the existing GTS mechanism specified in the IEEE 802.15.4 in terms of various performance metrics such as packets transmission, packet reception rate, packet loss rate, and effective utilisation of contention free period.

A robust guaranteed time slots allotment scheme for real-time and reliable communication in WBANs

The ever-increasing aging population and expenditure related to healthcare, consequently demand the requirement for a state-of-the-art healthcare system. Wireless body area networks (WBANs) are the potential contender for this requirement. The IEEE 802.15.4 standard is considered a suitable protocol for WBANs and its beacon-enabled mode supports real-time traffic through guaranteed time slots (GTS) feature. Nevertheless, it suffers from reliability and timeliness guarantees. To address this issue, this work advocates a robust guaranteed time slots allotment scheme (RGAS) that consists of two phases, viz.: 1) determination of the severity of sensor data using fuzzy inference system; 2) dynamic allocation of available GTS slots to the contending nodes. Through simulation results, we demonstrate that the proposed RGAS significantly outperforms the existing GTS mechanism specified in the IEEE 802.15.4 in terms of various performance metrics such as packets transmission, packet reception rate, packet loss rate, and effective utilisation of contention free period.

I-MAC: In-Body Sensor MAC in Wireless Body Area Networks for Healthcare IoT

The application of Internet-of-Things (IoT) technology in modern healthcare environment has given rise to a new paradigm known as healthcare IoT. The wireless body area network (WBAN) is one of the basic building blocks of IoT-based healthcare system, comprising many wearable (on-body) and implant (in-body) sensors placed in or around patient body connected to a hub for physiological signal monitoring. In in-body sensor-based WBAN, guaranteeing quality-of-service and prolonging network lifetime are major impediments due to the sensor location and limited battery capacity. In this article, we propose a novel energy-efficient medium access control (MAC) protocol for IEEE 802.15.6 standard complaint in-body sensor-based WBAN. Typically, the in-body sensor-based WBAN communication is hub-initiated; however, in case of an emergency event, the in-body sensor node transmits an emergency frame arbitrarily without sensing the channel. This inadvertent in-body sensor-initiated transmission has a very high probability of collision with the ongoing hub-initiated transmission, and/or another in-body sensor-initiated emergency frame transmission. This results in emergency frame retransmission and consequently affects the node's energy consumption and lifetime. To alleviate this issue, we propose a modified superframe structure, in which separate access phases are introduced for the emergency event and regular event. In case of an emergency event, a novel emergency event handling scheme and a ranking and priority assignment protocol is proposed to detect and address the critical event of in-body sensors. To minimize the collision, a scheduled access mechanism is proposed according to the criticality of the node. Performance analysis of the proposed in-body sensor MAC is done in terms of latency and overall power consumption, in case of both emergency and regular events.