A Survey on Wireless Wearable Body Area Networks: A Perspective of Technology and Economy

Abstract

The deployment of wearable or body-worn devices is increasing rapidly, and thus researchers’ interests mainly include technical and economical issues, such as networking, interoperability, security, power optimization, business growth and regulation. To address these issues properly, previous survey papers usually focused on describing the wireless body area network architecture and network protocols. This implies that deployment issues and awareness issues of wearable and BAN devices are not emphasized in previous work. To defeat this problem, in this study, we have focused on feasibility, limitations, and security concerns in wireless body area networks. In the aspect of the economy, we have focused on the compound annual growth rate of these devices in the global market, different regulations of wearable/wireless body area network devices in different regions and countries of the world and feasible research projects for wireless body area networks. In addition, this study focuses on the domain of devices that are equally important to physicians, sportsmen, trainers and coaches, computer scientists, engineers, and investors. The outcomes of this study relating to physicians, fitness trainers and coaches indicate that the use of these devices means they would be able to treat their clients in a more effective way. The study also converges the focus of businessmen on the Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) and provides manufacturers and vendors with information about different regulatory bodies that are monitoring and regulating WBAN devices. Therefore, by providing deployment issues in the aspects of technology and economy at the same time, we believe that this survey can serve as a preliminary material that will lead to more advancements and improvements in deployment in the area of wearable wireless body area networks. Finally, we present open issues and further research direction in the area of wireless body area networks.

Challenges and Advances of Hydrogel-Based Wearable Electrochemical Biosensors for Real-Time Monitoring of Biofluids: From Lab to Market. A Review

“…It is important to mention that each wireless technology, including NFC, Bluetooth, and Zigbee, serves specific use cases, and the choice depends on the specific requirements of the wearable device and its intended functionalities. For wearable biosensors, wireless body area networks (WBANs) are used for data communication . WBANs involve the interconnection of various body-worn or implanted sensors for communication with each other and with external devices, such as smartphones and laptops .…”

A Flexible Miniature Antenna for Body-Worn Devices: Design and Transmission Performance

“…The application of wireless networks for animal health monitoring has also increased in the last few years. With increased use, there is growing research interest in body-worn gateway devices, as they provide wireless communication across an implanted device, a body-worn device, and an external device using channels in, on, or outside the body [ 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 ].…”

“…Most flexible wearable antennas reported in the literature have a high degree of isolation between the antenna and human body tissue [ 2 , 5 , 8 , 10 , 15 , 16 , 19 , 23 , 25 ] and directional radiation patterns, which make these designs unsuitable for communications between an antenna placed on the body and another one inside the body. Only a few previous studies [ 6 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 24 , 26 ] presented the design of body-worn antennas for in-/on- and off-body communications.…”

DAIWN: Detection and Isolation of Wormhole Nodes in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

“…They are simple, flexible and can be easily deployed in all environments. They can be seen working inside the body parts of living and non-living objects; for example, airborne wireless sensor networks (Airborne WSNs) for airplane monitoring system (AMS), smartphone ad hoc network (SPAN), wireless wearable body area networks are few examples of more advanced implementations of these networks [1][2][3][4] . Moreover, Internet of Things, Internet of Vehicles, mobile cloud computing, ad hoc clouds over the mobile ad hoc networks, and air traffic control systems are the hot emerging research areas of wireless ad hoc networks [5][6][7][8][9][10] .…”

“…Moreover, we do not need to make any hardware changes in devices. 4. It has been validated and simulated in NS2 and satisfies the statistical benchmarks for accuracy, precision, F1-Score, and Matthews Correlation Coefficient (MCC).…”