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Challenges for Body Area Networks Concerning Radio Aspects

Carla Oliveira, Michal Mackowiak, Luis M. Correia

Instituto de Telecomunicacoes | Instituto Superior Tecnico, Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal

Body Area Networks engage a network of sensors either wearable or implanted into the human body, with a wide range of promising applications in medicine (health care and patient monitoring), firemen/military forces outfits, advanced sports training, personal identification, navigation or multimedia entertainment, among others. This paper gives an insight into the challenges for applications of Body Area Networks, looking forward to energy efficiency and sustainability. A cross-layer perspective is proposed foreseeing effective and efficient systems, comprising cooperation and knowledge sharing between the various system layers (e.g., from antenna design and channel modelling to physical and media access control layers). Central topics are addressed and interrelated, like services and applications, security and privacy issues, interoperability, node and network architecture (e.g., cooperative/relay, distributed schemes), data rate and bandwidth, or energy management. The paper stresses the core position of the radio channel on the overall system, prompting the strong influence of the human body and discussing strategies to overcome connectivity problems (e.g., smart deployment of relays on the body).
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