Wireless Body Area Networks for Healthcare Applications: Protocol Stack Review. (19th October 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Filipe, Luis; Fdez-Riverola, Florentino; Costa, Nuno; Pereira, António
• Is Part Of: International journal of distributed sensor networks. Volume 11:Number 10(2015)
• Publication Date: 2015-10-19
• Subjects: Sensor networks -- Periodicals; Intelligent agents (Computer software) -- Periodicals; Multisensor data fusion -- Periodicals; 681.2
• DOI: 10.1155/2015/213705
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1550-1329

Abstract

Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) supporting healthcare applications are in early development stage but offer valuable contributions at monitoring, diagnostic, or therapeutic levels. They cover real-time medical information gathering obtained from different sensors with secure data communication and low power consumption. As a consequence of the increasing interest in the application of this type of networks, several articles dealing with different aspects of such systems have been published recently. In this paper, we compile and compare technologies and protocols published in the most recent researches, seeking WBAN issues for medical monitoring purposes to select the most useful solutions for this area of networking. The most important features under consideration in our analysis include wireless communication protocols, frequency bands, data bandwidth, transmission distance, encryption, authentication methods, power consumption, and mobility. Our study demonstrates that some characteristics of surveyed protocols are very useful to medical appliances and patients in a WBAN domain.