The design and development of wearable biosensor systems for health monitoring has garnered lots of attention in the scientific community and the industry during the last years. Mainly motivated by increasing healthcare costs and propelled by recent technological advances in miniature biosensing devices, smart textiles, microelectronics, and wireless communications, the continuous advance of wearable sensor-based systems will potentially transform the future of healthcare by enabling proactive personal health management and ubiquitous monitoring of a patient's health condition. These systems can comprise various types of small physiological sensors, transmission modules and processing capabilities, and can thus facilitate low-cost wearable unobtrusive solutions for continuous all-day and any-place health, mental and activity status monitoring. This paper attempts to comprehensively review the current research and development on wearable biosensor systems for health monitoring. A variety of system implementations are compared in an approach to identify the technological shortcomings of the current state-of-the-art in wearable biosensor solutions. An emphasis is given to multiparameter physiological sensing system designs, providing reliable vital signs measurements and incorporating real-time decision support for early detection of symptoms or context awareness. In order to evaluate the maturity level of the top current achievements in wearable health-monitoring systems, a set of significant features, that best describe the functionality and the characteristics of the systems, has been selected to derive a thorough study. The aim of this survey is not to criticize, but to serve as a reference for researchers and developers in this scientific area and to provide direction for future research improvements.

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A Survey on Wearable Sensor-Based Systems for Health Monitoring and Prognosis

System Identification I

This document provides updates to IEEE Std 802.16's MIB for the MAC, PHY and asso- ciated management procedures in order to accommodate recent extensions to the standard.

IEEE Standard for Local and Metropolitan Area Networks Part 16: Air Interface for Fixed Broadband Wireless Access Systems Draft Amendment: Management Information Base Extensions

Recent developments and technological advancements in wireless communication, MicroElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS) technology and integrated circuits has enabled low-power, intelligent, miniaturized, invasive/non-invasive micro and nano-technology sensor nodes strategically placed in or around the human body to be used in various applications, such as personal health monitoring. This exciting new area of research is called Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) and leverages the emerging IEEE 802.15.6 and IEEE 802.15.4j standards, specifically standardized for medical WBANs. The aim of WBANs is to simplify and improve speed, accuracy, and reliability of communication of sensors/actuators within, on, and in the immediate proximity of a human body. The vast scope of challenges associated with WBANs has led to numerous publications. In this paper, we survey the current state-of-art of WBANs based on the latest standards and publications. Open issues and challenges within each area are also explored as a source of inspiration towards future developments in WBANs.

Wireless Body Area Networks: A Survey

The distributed nature and dynamic topology of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) introduces very special requirements in routing protocols that should be met. The most important feature of a routing protocol, in order to be efficient for WSNs, is the energy consumption and the extension of the network's lifetime. During the recent years, many energy efficient routing protocols have been proposed for WSNs. In this paper, energy efficient routing protocols are classified into four main schemes: Network Structure, Communication Model, Topology Based and Reliable Routing. The routing protocols belonging to the first category can be further classified as flat or hierarchical. The routing protocols belonging to the second category can be further classified as Query-based or Coherent and non-coherent-based or Negotiation-based. The routing protocols belonging to the third category can be further classified as Location-based or Mobile Agent-based. The routing protocols belonging to the fourth category can be further classified as QoS-based or Multipath-based. Then, an analytical survey on energy efficient routing protocols for WSNs is provided. In this paper, the classification initially proposed by Al-Karaki, is expanded, in order to enhance all the proposed papers since 2004 and to better describe which issues/operations in each protocol illustrate/enhance the energy-efficiency issues.

Energy-Efficient Routing Protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey

Review Article: A comprehensive review of the application characteristics and traffic requirements of a smart grid communications network

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Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) for Medical Applications

In recent years interest in the application of Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) for patient monitoring applications has grown significantly. A WBAN can be used to develop patient monitoring systems which offer flexibility to medical staff and mobility to patients. Patients monitoring could involve a range of activities including data collection from various body sensors for storage and diagnosis, transmitting data to remote medical databases, and controlling medical appliances, etc. Also, WBANs could operate in an interconnected mode to enable remote patient monitoring using telehealth/e-health applications. A WBAN can also be used to monitor athletes' performance and assist them in training activities. For such applications it is very important that a WBAN collects and transmits data reliably, and in a timely manner to a monitoring entity. In order to address these issues, this paper presents WBAN design techniques for medical applications. We examine the WBAN design issues with particular emphasis on the design of MAC protocols and power consumption profiles of WBAN. Some simulation results are presented to further illustrate the performances of various WBAN design techniques.

Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) Design Techniques and Performance Evaluation

Energy harvesting (EH) is considered the key enabling technology for mass deployment of Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices. Efficient EH techniques eliminate the needs for frequent energy source replacement, thus offering a near perpetual network operating environment. Advances in the EH techniques have shifted the design paradigm of routing protocols for energy-harvesting wireless sensor network based IoT applications from “energy-aware” to “energy-harvesting-aware” . This paper aims to design an energy-harvesting-aware routing protocol for heterogeneous IoT networks in the presence of ambient energy sources. We propose a new routing algorithm energy-harvesting-aware routing algorithm (EHARA), which is further enhanced by integrating a new parameter called “energy back-off” . Combining with different energy harvesting techniques, the proposed algorithm improves the lifetime of the nodes and the network’s quality-of-service (QoS) under variable traffic load and energy availability conditions. This work also investigates the system performance metrics for different energy harvesting conditions. Performance results demonstrate that the proposed EHARA significantly improves energy efficiency while satisfying the QoS requirements of distributed IoT networks in comparison with existing routing protocols.

A Distributed Energy-Harvesting-Aware Routing Algorithm for Heterogeneous IoT Networks

The book provides a comprehensive overview for the latest WBAN systems, technologies, and applications. The chapters of the book have been written by various specialists who are experts in their areas of research and practice. The book starts with the basic techniques involved in designing and building WBAN systems. It explains the deployment issues and then moves into the application areas of WBAN. The remaining chapters focus on the development of hardware, signal processing algorithms, and wireless communication and network design for wearable and implantable body sensors used in WBAN applications. The book also deals with the antenna design, propagation in and around the body, channel modeling, coexistence and power management issues, which are other critical design components for WBAN systems to achieve a successful hospital deployment.

Jamil Y. Khan

Papers

Review Article: A comprehensive review of the application characteristics and traffic requirements of a smart grid communications network

Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) for Medical Applications

Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) Design Techniques and Performance Evaluation

A Distributed Energy-Harvesting-Aware Routing Algorithm for Heterogeneous IoT Networks

Wireless Body Area Networks: Technology, Implementation, and Applications