A review of wireless body area networks

Abstract

The widespread adoption of wireless body area network (WBAN) in healthcare presents opportunities to meet the increasing demand for medical services. WBAN enables continuous real-time (RT) monitoring through biomedical sensor nodes positioned in or around a patient's body, collecting vital physiological data. In addition, WBAN imposes stringent criteria for energy efficiency and reliability throughout data collection and transmission. This review paper places significant emphasis on the fundamental concept and essential characteristics of WBAN technology. First, the WBAN features, including architecture, sensor nodes types and network topology is presented. Then, the study explores a wide variety of communication standards and multiple access (MA) mechanism deployed in this technology. Moreover, it discusses open research and challenging issues such as heterogeneous traffic, quality of services (QoS), energy consumption, reliability, interference management, and human body movements effect. Finally, the paper is concluded, and future directions are identified in this evolving field of human health monitoring technology.