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

Even after 16 years of existence, low energy adaptive clustering hierarchy (LEACH) protocol is still gaining the attention of the research community working in the area of wireless sensor network (WSN). This itself shows the importance of this protocol. Researchers have come up with various and diverse modifications of the LEACH protocol. Successors of LEACH protocol are now available from single hop to multi-hop scenarios. Extensive work has already been done related to LEACH and it is a good idea for a new research in the field of WSN to go through LEACH and its variants over the years. This paper surveys the variants of LEACH routing protocols proposed so far and discusses the enhancement and working of them. This survey classifies all the protocols in two sections, namely, single hop communication and multi-hop communication based on data transmission from the cluster head to the base station. A comparitive analysis using nine different parameters, such as energy efficiency, overhead, scalability complexity, and so on, has been provided in a chronological fashion. The article also discusses the strong and the weak points of each and every variants of LEACH. Finally the paper concludes with suggestions on future research domains in the area of WSN.

A Survey on Successors of LEACH Protocol

Current progress in wearable and implanted health monitoring technologies has strong potential to alter the future of healthcare services by enabling ubiquitous monitoring of patients. A typical health monitoring system consists of a network of wearable or implanted sensors that constantly monitor physiological parameters. Collected data are relayed using existing wireless communication protocols to a base station for additional processing. This article provides researchers with information to compare the existing low-power communication technologies that can potentially support the rapid development and deployment of WBAN systems, and mainly focuses on remote monitoring of elderly or chronically ill patients in residential environments.

A Survey on Wireless Body Area Networks for eHealthcare Systems in Residential Environments

Wireless sensor networks are appearing as an emerging need for mankind. Though, Such networks are still in research phase however, they have high potential to be applied in almost every field of life. Lots of research is done and a lot more is awaiting to be standardized. In this work, cluster based routing in wireless sensor networks is studied precisely. Further, we modify one of the most prominent wireless sensor network's routing protocol "LEACH" as modified LEACH (MODLEACH) by introducing efficient cluster head replacement scheme and dual transmitting power levels. Our modified LEACH, in comparison with LEACH out performs it using metrics of cluster head formation, through put and network life. Afterwards, hard and soft thresholds are implemented on modified LEACH (MODLEACH) that boast the performance even more. Finally a brief performance analysis of LEACH, Modified LEACH (MODLEACH), MODLEACH with hard threshold (MODLEACHHT) and MODLEACH with soft threshold (MODLEACHST) is undertaken considering metrics of throughput, network life and cluster head replacements.

MODLEACH: A Variant of LEACH for WSNs

Clustering Objectives in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey and Research Direction Analysis

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) with their dynamic applications gained a tremendous attention of researchers. Constant monitoring of critical situations attracted researchers to utilize WSNs at vast platforms. The main focus in WSNs is to enhance network life-time as much as one could, for efficient and optimal utilization of resources. Different approaches based upon clustering are proposed for optimum functionality. Network life-time is always related with energy of sensor nodes deployed at remote areas for constant and fault tolerant monitoring. In this work, we propose Quadrature-LEACH (Q-LEACH) for homogenous networks which enhances stability period, network life-time and throughput quiet significantly.

Q-LEACH: A New Routing Protocol for WSNs

http://ww3.comsats.edu.pk/Faculty/Users/EE/obaid_ur_rehman/Q%20Leach.pdf

In recent few yearsWireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have seen an increased interest in various applications like border field security, disaster management and medical applications. So large number of sensor nodes are deployed for such applications, which can work autonomously. Due to small power batteries in WSNs, efficient utilization of battery power is an important factor. Clustering is an efficient technique to extend life time of sensor networks by reducing the energy consumption. In this paper, we propose a new protocol; Energy Consumption Rate based Stable Election Protocol (ECRSEP). Our CH selection scheme is based on the weighted election probabilities of each node according to the Energy Consumption Rate (ECR) of each node. We compare results of our proposed protocol with Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy (LEACH), Distributed Energy Efficient Clustering (DEEC), Stable Election Protocol (SEP), and Enhanced SEP(ESEP). Our simulation results show that our proposed protocol, ECRSEP outperforms all these protocols in terms of network stability and network lifetime.

Energy Consumption Rate based Stable Election Protocol (ECRSEP) for WSNs

Constant monitoring of patients without disturbing their daily activities can be achieved through mobile networks. Sensor nodes distributed in a home environment to provide home assistance gives concept of Wireless Wearable Body Area Networks. Gathering useful information and its transmission to the required destination may face several problems. In this paper we figure out different issues and discuss their possible solutions in order to obtain an optimized infrastructure for the care of elderly people. Different channel models along with their characteristics, noise filtering in different equalization techniques, energy consumption and effect of different impairments have been discussed in our paper. The novelty of this work is that we highlighted multiple issues along with their possible solutions that a BAN infrastructure is still facing.

B. Manzoor

Papers

Q-LEACH: A New Routing Protocol for WSNs

Q-LEACH: A New Routing Protocol for WSNs

Energy Consumption Rate based Stable Election Protocol (ECRSEP) for WSNs

Energy Consumption Rate based Stable Election Protocol (ECRSEP) for WSNs

Noise Filtering, Channel Modeling and Energy Utilization in Wireless Body Area Networks