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

In wireless environments, transmission and reception costs dominate system power consumption, motivating research effort on new technologies capable of reducing the footprint of the radio, paving the way for the Internet of Things. The most important challenge is to reduce power consumption when receivers are idle, the so called idle-listening cost. One approach proposes switching off the main receiver, then introduces new wake-up circuitry capable of detecting an incoming transmission, optionally discriminating the packet destination using addressing, then switching on the main radio only when required. This wake-up receiver technology represents the ultimate frontier in low power radio communication. In this paper, we present a comprehensive literature review of the research progress in wake-up radio (WuR) hardware and relevant networking software. First, we present an overview of the WuR system architecture, including challenges to hardware design and a comparison of solutions presented throughout the last decade. Next, we present various medium access control and routing protocols as well as diverse ways to exploit WuRs, both as an extension of pre-existing systems and as a new concept to manage low-power networking.

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Ultra Low Power Wake-Up Radios: A Hardware and Networking Survey

This expanded and thoroughly revised edition of Thomas H. Lee's acclaimed guide to the design of gigahertz RF integrated circuits features a completely new chapter on the principles of wireless systems. The chapters on low-noise amplifiers, oscillators and phase noise have been significantly expanded as well. The chapter on architectures now contains several examples of complete chip designs that bring together all the various theoretical and practical elements involved in producing a prototype chip. First Edition Hb (1998): 0-521-63061-4 First Edition Pb (1998); 0-521-63922-0

The Design of CMOS Radio-Frequency Integrated Circuits: RF CIRCUITS THROUGH THE AGES

Investigating factors influencing the physicians’ adoption of electronic health record (EHR) in healthcare system of Bangladesh: An empirical study

The health system of Bangladesh is haunted by challenges of accessibility and affordability. Despite impressive gains in many health indicators, recent evidence has raised concerns regarding the utilization, quality and equity of healthcare. In the context of new and unfamiliar public health challenges including high population density and rapid urbanization, eHealth and mHealth are being promoted as a route to cost-effective, equitable and quality healthcare in Bangladesh. The aim of this paper is to highlight such initiatives and understand their true potential. This scoping study applies a combination of research tools to explore 26 eHealth and mHealth initiatives in Bangladesh. A screening matrix was developed by modifying the framework of Arksey & O’Malley, further complemented by case study and SWOT analysis to identify common traits among the selected interventions. The WHO health system building blocks approach was then used for thematic analysis of these traits. Findings suggest that most eHealth and mHealth initiatives have proliferated within the private sector, using mobile phones. The most common initiatives include tele-consultation, prescription and referral. While a minority of projects have a monitoring and evaluation framework, less than a quarter have undertaken evaluation. Most of the initiatives use a health management information system (HMIS) to monitor implementation. However, these do not provide for effective sharing of information and interconnectedness among the various actors. There are extremely few individuals with eHealth training in Bangladesh and there is a strong demand for capacity building and experience sharing, especially for implementation and policy making. There is also a lack of research evidence on how to design interventions to meet the needs of the population and on potential benefits. This study concludes that Bangladesh needs considerable preparation and planning to sustain eHealth and mHealth initiatives successfully. Additional formative and operational research is essential to explore the true potential of the technology. Frameworks for regulation in regards to eHealth governance should be the aim of future research on the integration of eHealth and mHealth into the Bangladesh health system.

/pdf/ehealth-and-mhealth-initiatives-in-bangladesh-a-scoping-1i64mn32wk.pdf

eHealth and mHealth initiatives in Bangladesh: A scoping study

Applications of wearable and implanted wireless sensor devices are hot research area. A specialized field called the body area networks (BAN) has emerged to support this area. Managing and controlling such a network is a challenging task. An efficient media access control (MAC) protocol to handle proper management of media access can considerably improve the performance of such a network. Power consumption and delay are major concerns for MAC protocols in a BAN. Low cost wakeup radio module attached with sensor devices can help reduce power consumption and prolong the network lifetime by reducing idle state power consumption and increasing sleep time of a BAN node. In this article, we propose a new MAC protocol for BAN using out of band (on-demand) wakeup radio through a centralized and coordinated external wakeup mechanism. We have compared our method against some existing MAC protocols. Our method is found to be efficient in terms of power consumption and delay.

/pdf/a-power-efficient-mac-protocol-for-wireless-body-area-1nrvt91jgm.pdf

A power efficient MAC protocol for wireless body area networks

Applications of wearable and implanted wireless sensor devices are hot research area. A specialized field called the Body Area Networks (BAN) has emerged to support this area. Energy consumption and delay are major concern for Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols in a BAN. Low cost wake up radio module attached with sensor devices can help to reduce energy consumption and prolong the network lifetime by reducing idle state energy consumption and increasing sleep time of a BAN node. In this paper, we propose a new MAC protocol for body area network using an out-of-band wake up radio. We have used an on-demand scheduling procedure for communication through a centralized and coordinated external wake up mechanism. We compared our method with some existing MAC protocols and is found to outperform them in terms of energy consumption and delay. Use of wake up radio improved the overall performance of the proposed on-demand MAC.

A MAC Protocol for Body Area Networks using Out-of-Band Radio

Telemedicine refers to the use of information and communication technology to assist with medical information and services by the transmission of images, voice and other data over large distances. Although a number of institutions have tried to introduce telemedicine in Bangladesh since 1999, none of them have been commercially successful. The reasons include technical limitations, lack of a legal framework, and inability to meet the needs of the community at a low cost. Therefore, we propose a telemedicine network architecture using existing fiber optic backbone of Bangladesh. Its applicability is shown with a database system to communicate between doctors and patient. The proposed system is more rigorous and speedy. It has less installation charge. Besides, an overview of telemedicine in Bangladesh perspective has also been presented. The services and benefits from the proposed architecture have been discussed. The architecture can also be connected with Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs).

A Telecommunication Network Architecture for Telemedicine in Bangladesh and Its Applicability.

Critical infrastructure monitoring applications are rapidly increasing. Application requirements include reliable data transfer, energy efficiency, and long deployment lifetime. These applications must also be able to operate in an extremely low-cost communication environment in order to be attractive to potential users. A low rate wireless personal area network can help control and manage the operations of such applications. In this paper, we present a medium access control (MAC) protocol for low-energy critical infrastructure monitoring (LECIM) applications. The proposed MAC protocol is based on a framed slotted aloha multiple access schemes. For downlink communication, we use a wakeup radio approach to avoid complex bookkeeping associated with the traditional MAC protocols. Analytical expressions for power consumption and delay are derived to analyze and compare the performance of our proposed protocol with the existing well-known T-MAC, B-MAC, X-MAC, ZigBee, and WiseMAC protocols. It is shown that our proposed protocol outperforms all the other protocols in terms of power consumption and delay.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1155/2012/504946

Energy Efficient MAC Protocol for Low-Energy Critical Infrastructure Monitoring Networks Using Wakeup Radio

The IEEE 802.15.4 standard is designed to provide a low-power, low data rate protocol offering a high reliability. As an amendment to this standard, IEEE 802.15.4a introduces new options for physical layer to enable precision ranging. In this work, we analyzed the theoretical throughput and delay bounds of the unslotted version of chirp spread spectrum PHY-based 802.15.4a. The formulae for transmission between one sender and one receiver for an ideal channel with no transmission errors are given. The throughput and delay bounds are derived for different frequency bands and data rates. Additionally, to measure spectral utilization, we measured the bandwidth efficiency for both the standards. We also compared our results with IEEE 802.15.4. The comparative analysis concludes that the performance of 802.15.4a exceeds 802.15.4 in terms of throughput and delay. The analytical results of throughput are verified by computer simulations. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

M. Sanaullah Chowdhury

Papers

A power efficient MAC protocol for wireless body area networks

A MAC Protocol for Body Area Networks using Out-of-Band Radio

A Telecommunication Network Architecture for Telemedicine in Bangladesh and Its Applicability.

Energy Efficient MAC Protocol for Low-Energy Critical Infrastructure Monitoring Networks Using Wakeup Radio

Throughput and delay limits of chirp spread spectrum-based IEEE 802.15.4a