The use of wireless sensor networks (WSN) in healthcare applications is growing in a fast pace. Numerous applications such as heart rate monitor, blood pressure monitor and endoscopic capsule are already in use. To address the growing use of sensor technology in this area, a new field known as wireless body area networks (WBAN or simply BAN) has emerged. As most devices and their applications are wireless in nature, security and privacy concerns are among major areas of concern. Due to direct involvement of humans also increases the sensitivity. Whether the data gathered from patients or individuals are obtained with the consent of the person or without it due to the need by the system, misuse or privacy concerns may restrict people from taking advantage of the full benefits from the system. People may not see these devices safe for daily use. There may also possibility of serious social unrest due to the fear that such devices may be used for monitoring and tracking individuals by government agencies or other private organizations. In this paper we discuss these issues and analyze in detail the problems and their possible measures.

Telemedicine refers to the use of information and communication technology to provide and support health care mainly for the purpose of providing consultation. It is also a way to provide medical procedures or examinations to remote locations. It has the potential to improve both the quality and the access to health care services delivery while lowering costs even in the scarcity of resources. Understanding the potentiality of telemedicine, many developing countries are implementing telemedicine to provide health care facility to remote area where health care facilities are deficient. Bangladesh is not an exception to this either. In this paper we mention the reasons why Bangladesh has to move for telemedicine. We also present the past and on-going telemedicine activities and projects in Bangladesh. Analyzing these projects we have found out some factors which should be assessed carefully for successful implementation of telemedicine application. Finally we propose a prototype telemedicine network for Bangladesh that can improve health facilities through telemedicine by making a connection between rural health facility providers and special hospitals.

Energy efficiency is a primary requirement in a wireless sensor network (WSN). This is a major design parameter in medium access control (MAC) protocols for WSN due to limited resources in sensor nodes that include low battery power. Hence a proposed MAC protocol must be energy efficient by reducing the potential energy wastes. Developing such a MAC protocol has been a hot research area in WSN. To avoid wasting the limited energy, various energy saving mechanisms are proposed for MAC protocols. These mechanisms have a common design objective—to save energy to maximize the network lifetime. This paper presents a survey on various energy saving mechanisms that are proposed for MAC protocols in WSN. We present a detailed discussion of these mechanisms and discuss their strengths and weaknesses. We also discuss MAC protocols that use these energy saving mechanisms.

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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.

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