Technologies and Research Trends in Wireless Body Area Networks for Healthcare: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Owing to the increasing interest in the integration of the medical technology and the information and communications technology, research on wireless body area networks (WBANs), which apply a sensor network to the human body, is being actively conducted. Existing sensor network technology has the potential to be used in a WBAN; however, it has some limitations. In particular, a WBAN has a very different network environment compared to a sensor network that uses free space, because wireless sensors in a BAN transmit through parts of the human body. Therefore, research on WBANs involves a variety of research areas that differ slightly from those of conventional sensor networks and take into account the characteristics of the human body. This study investigates the environmental characteristics of a WBAN that differ from conventional sensor networks and examines the areas that have been studied in academia to realize more efficient WBANs. From studies published since 2001, when the concept of the WBAN was introduced, research trends in WBANs were investigated using the systematic literature review (SLR) technique. The investigation in this study includes the classification of research and research fields in line with research content. Further, survey results are presented and the outlook for further study is summarized.

Ultra-Low Frequency Eccentric Pendulum-Based Electromagnetic Vibrational Energy Harvester

“…The wireless sensor network (WSN) could monitor environmental parameters with advantages of high efficiency and total automation, and it has great application potential for many aspects [ 1 , 2 ]. Especially in fields of wireless body area network (WBAN) for personal health monitoring [ 3 , 4 , 5 ] and wireless oceanic sensor network (WOSN) [ 6 , 7 , 8 ], the WSN system benefits from its unmanned-working feature to take full advantage of high promptness and give a warning of anomalous environment or body status change in time. However, the limited battery lifetime has always been a severe issue, which blocks large-scale applications of WSN [ 9 , 10 ].…”

Reliable and Energy Efficient MAC Mechanism for Patient Monitoring in Hospitals

“…Applications of body area network other than healthcare include entertainment, Lifestyle and Sports, Military etc [15]. Network environment of body area network is different from wireless sensor network [16], [17]. There are some minor differences among body area network and other applications of wireless sensor network, such as topology is known in a body area network, communication is hybrid, replacement of batteries is possible but difficult, and information is both identity centric and data centric etc.…”

Even energy consumption and backside routing: An improved routing protocol for effective data transmission in wireless body area networks

“…From the literature, 1 we know that recent studies on WBANs, since 2001, have focused on hardware and device technology, media access control (MAC) layer technology, network layer technology and security and WBAN technology. In other words, the above-mentioned fields are important technical fields constituting WBAN technology and indicate that they have become a subject of interest for researchers.…”