Wireless sensor networks for healthcare: A survey

The increasing use of wireless networks and the constant miniaturization of electrical devices has empowered the development of Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs). In these networks various sensors are attached on clothing or on the body or even implanted under the skin. The wireless nature of the network and the wide variety of sensors offer numerous new, practical and innovative applications to improve health care and the Quality of Life. The sensors of a WBAN measure for example the heartbeat, the body temperature or record a prolonged electrocardiogram. Using a WBAN, the patient experiences a greater physical mobility and is no longer compelled to stay in the hospital. This paper offers a survey of the concept of Wireless Body Area Networks. First, we focus on some applications with special interest in patient monitoring. Then the communication in a WBAN and its positioning between the different technologies is discussed. An overview of the current research on the physical layer, existing MAC and network protocols is given. Further, cross layer and quality of service is discussed. As WBANs are placed on the human body and often transport private data, security is also considered. An overview of current and past projects is given. Finally, the open research issues and challenges are pointed out.

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A survey on wireless body area networks

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.

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

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have become a leading solution in many important applications such as intrusion detection, target tracking, industrial automation, smart building and so on. Typically, a WSN consists of a large number of small, low-cost sensor nodes that are distributed in the target area for collecting data of interest. For a WSN to provide high throughput in an energy-efficient way, designing an efficient Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol is of paramount importance because the MAC layer coordinates nodes' access to the shared wireless medium. To show the evolution of WSN MAC protocols, this article surveys the latest progresses in WSN MAC protocol designs over the period 2002-2011. In the early development stages, designers were mostly concerned with energy efficiency because sensor nodes are usually limited in power supply. Recently, new protocols are being developed to provide multi-task support and efficient delivery of bursty traffic. Therefore, research attention has turned back to throughput and delay. This article details the evolution of WSN MAC protocols in four categories: asynchronous, synchronous, frame-slotted, and multichannel. These designs are evaluated in terms of energy efficiency, data delivery performance, and overhead needed to maintain a protocol's mechanisms. With extensive analysis of the protocols many future directions are stated at the end of this survey. The performance of different classes of protocols could be substantially improved in future designs by taking into consideration the recent advances in technologies and application demands.

The Evolution of MAC Protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey

Current wireless technologies, such as wireless body area networks and wireless personal area networks, provide promising applications in medical monitoring systems to measure specified physiological data and also provide location-based information, if required. With the increasing sophistication of wearable and implantable medical devices and their integration with wireless sensors, an ever-expanding range of therapeutic and diagnostic applications is being pursued by research and commercial organizations. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive review of recent developments in wireless sensor technology for monitoring behaviour related to human physiological responses. It presents background information on the use of wireless technology and sensors to develop a wireless physiological measurement system. A generic miniature platform and other available technologies for wireless sensors have been studied in terms of hardware and software structural requirements for a low-cost, low-power, non-invasive and unobtrusive system.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0967-3334/29/11/R01/pdf

Wireless body sensor networks for health-monitoring applications.

This paper presents a novel energy-efficient MAC Protocol designed specifically for wireless body area sensor networks (WBASN) focused towards pervasive healthcare applications. Wireless body area networks consist of wireless sensor nodes attached to the human body to monitor vital signs such as body temperature, activity or heart-rate. The network adopts a master-slave architecture, where the body-worn slave node periodically sends sensor readings to a central master node. Unlike traditional peer-to-peer wireless sensor networks, the nodes in this biomedical WBASN are not deployed in an ad hoc fashion. Joining a network is centrally managed and all communications are single-hop. To reduce energy consumption, all the sensor nodes are in standby or sleep mode until the centrally assigned time slot. Once a node has joined a network, there is no possibility of collision within a cluster as all communication is initiated by the central node and is addressed uniquely to a slave node. To avoid collisions with nearby transmitters, a clear channel assessment algorithm based on standard listen-before-transmit (LBT) is used. To handle time slot overlaps, the novel concept of a wakeup fallback time is introduced. Using single-hop communication and centrally controlled sleep/wakeup times leads to significant energy reductions for this application compared to more ldquoflexiblerdquo network MAC protocols such as 802.11 or Zigbee. As duty cycle is reduced, the overall power consumption approaches the standby power. The protocol is implemented in hardware as part of the Sensiumtrade system-on-chip WBASN ASIC, in a 0.13- mum CMOS process.

Energy Efficient Medium Access Protocol for Wireless Medical Body Area Sensor Networks

This paper describes the integration of a system solution with a full-custom hardware MAC, digital microprocessor core and I/O peripherals, on-chip memory, micropower ADC, wireless transceiver and custom sensor interfaces. This SoC platform device is capable of achieving ubiquitous medical monitoring when interfaced to appropriate body worn sensors, and represents state-of-the art in terms of functionality and ultra- low-power consumption.

A 1V, Micropower System-on-Chip for Vital-Sign Monitoring in Wireless Body Sensor Networks

This paper presents a 1 V RF transceiver for biotelemetry and wireless body sensor network (WBSN) applications, realized as part of an ultra low power system-on-chip (SoC), the Sensiumtrade. The transceiver utilizes FSK/GFSK modulation at a data rate of 50 kbit/s to provide wireless connectivity between target sensor nodes and a central base-station node in a single-hop star network topology operating in the 862-870 MHz European short-range-device (SRD) and the 902-928 MHz North American Industrial, Scientific & Medical (ISM) frequency bands. Controlled by a proprietary media access controller (MAC) which is hardware implemented on chip, the transceiver operates half-duplex, achieving -102 dBm receiver input sensitivity (for 1E-3 raw bit error rate) and up to -7 dBm transmitter output power through a single antenna port. It consumes 2.1 mA during receive and up to 2.6 mA during transmit from a 0.9 to 1.5 V supply. It is fabricated in a 0.13 mum CMOS technology and occupies 7 mm2 in a SoC die size of 4 times 4 mm2.

A 1 V Wireless Transceiver for an Ultra-Low-Power SoC for Biotelemetry Applications

In this paper we present a system-on-chip for wireless body sensor networks, which integrates a transceiver, hardware MAC protocol, microprocessor, IO peripherals, memories, ADC and custom sensor interfaces. Addressing the challenges in the design, this paper will continue to discuss the issues in the applications of this technology to body worn monitoring for real-time measurement of ECG, heart rate, physical activity, respiration and/or skin temperature. Two application challenges are described; the real-time measurement of energy expenditure using the LifePebble, and; the development issues surrounding the ‘Digital Patch’.

Sensium: an ultra-low-power wireless body sensor network platform: Design & application challenges

This paper presents a IV RF transceiver implemented as part of an ultra low power system-on-chip (SoC), the Sensium , for wireless body area sensor network (WBASN) applications. Operating in the 862-870 MHz European short- range-device (SRD) or the 902-928 MHz North American Industrial, Scientific & Medical (ISM) frequency bands, the transceiver utilizes digital 2-level FSK modulation at a data rate of 50 kbit/s to provide wireless connectivity between target sensor nodes and a central base-station node. The wireless transceiver operates half-duplex and achieves -102 dBm receiver input sensitivity (for raw 1E-3 bit error rate) and up to -7 dBm transmitter output power through a single antenna port. It consumes 2.1 mA during receive and up to 2.6 mA during transmit from a 1.0 to 1.5 V supply. This surpasses state-of-the- art in terms of performance versus power consumption. It is fabricated in a 0.13 mum CMOS technology and occupies approximately 7 mm in a SoC die size of 4x4 mm .

A. C. W. Wong

Papers

Energy Efficient Medium Access Protocol for Wireless Medical Body Area Sensor Networks

A 1V, Micropower System-on-Chip for Vital-Sign Monitoring in Wireless Body Sensor Networks

A 1 V Wireless Transceiver for an Ultra-Low-Power SoC for Biotelemetry Applications

Sensium: an ultra-low-power wireless body sensor network platform: Design & application challenges

A 1V wireless transceiver for an ultra low power SoC for biotelemetry applications