Moving Towards Body-to-Body Sensor Networks for Ubiquitous Applications: A Survey

Abstract

Thanks to their arising abilities to influence the human lifestyle, along with reducing the healthcare systems’ cost, wireless body area networks (WBANs) still form a strongly growing research field. Recent advances focus on the opportunities of coexistence and communication between a group of WBANs, that will forward the sensing data, using persons as network relays, until reaching a remote analysis server or cloud servers via the Internet, forming thus a body-to-body network (BBN). Such new-style networks support a range of innovative and promising applications, including ubiquitous healthcare (U-health), interactive games, and military, to cite a few. In this paper, we first present the evolution of the single WBAN concept to the cooperative network of multiple WBANs, giving rise to the BBN concept. A synopsis of the WBAN and BBN respective standards and applications is given, and the emerging BBN challenges are highlighted. Then, we present and discuss the existing WBAN proposals, especially the candidate WBAN protocols that could be adapted and used in BBNs, focusing on four intrinsically related axes of great importance for BBN design: energy efficiency, mobility prediction, quality of service (QoS) and security. Further BBN open issues are also investigated, namely, the wireless propagation between humans carrying wearable devices, the interference, storage and privacy issues as well as the heterogeneity of BBN devices and traffic.

Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN)-Based Telemedicine for Emergency Care

“…The IEEE 802.15.6 WBAN standard has measurements on channel modes, while it also includes the mobility of nodes and effects caused by human interaction [6]. Medical WBAN ensures the early detection of diseases, thus resulting in the prevention of illness and a decrease in healthcare cost [6,7]. WBAN is capable of providing ubiquitous healthcare services and maintains these records in servers [7].…”

“…Medical WBAN ensures the early detection of diseases, thus resulting in the prevention of illness and a decrease in healthcare cost [6,7]. WBAN is capable of providing ubiquitous healthcare services and maintains these records in servers [7]. Because of WBAN, there are many inventions which are easily usable technologies for monitoring the health of patients [8].…”

Special Issue: Empowering eHealth with Smart Internet of Things (IoT) Medical Devices

“…Six papers have been selected in this special issue that respond to questions raised [1][2][3][4][5][6]. The first paper, entitled "Design, Fabrication, and Testing of an Internet Connected Intravenous Drip Monitoring Device" submitted by researchers from German universities, presents a monitoring system retro-fittable for existing Intravenous (IV) infusion setup that leverages human based estimations of time required by an IV bottle to empty, which makes the IV therapy vulnerable to human error [1].…”

“…The last paper 6, entitled "Moving Towards Body-to-Body Sensor Networks for Ubiquitous Applications: A Survey", presents the evolution of the single WBAN concept to the cooperative network of multiple WBANs, giving rise to the Body-to-Body network (BBN) concept [6]. A synopsis of the WBAN and BBN respective standards and applications is given, and the emerging BBN challenges are highlighted.…”

“…Following this, the existing WBAN proposals are discussed, with particular reference to the candidate WBAN protocols that could be adapted and used in BBNs, which focuses on four intrinsically related axes of great importance for BBN design, that is, energy efficiency, mobility prediction, quality of service (QoS) and security. Further BBN open issues are also investigated, namely, the wireless propagation between humans carrying wearable devices, the interference, storage and privacy issues, as well as the heterogeneity of BBN devices and traffic [6].…”