Wireless Body Area Network for Health Monitoring
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by American Scientific Research Journal for Engineering, Technology, and Sciences... American Scientific Research Journal for Engineering, Technology, and Sciences (ASRJETS) ISSN (Print) 2313-4410, ISSN (Online) 2313-4402 © Global Society of Scientific Research and Researchers http://asrjetsjournal.org/ A Survey: Wireless Body Area Network for Health Monitoring Varsha Wahanea*, Dr. P. V. Ingoleb aResearch Scholar, Sant Gadge Baba Amravati University, Amravati bProf Ram Meghe Institute of Technology and Research, Badnera aEmail: [email protected] Abstract With an increasingly mobile society and the worldwide deployment of mobile and wireless networks, the wireless infrastructure can support many current and emerging health care applications. Citizens, being patients or non-patients, will not only be able to get medical advice from a distance but will also be able to send from any location full detailed and accurate vital signal measurements, as if they had been taken in medical centers. Towards this direction, the proposed system is highly customizable vital signal monitoring system based on Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN). The proposed system allows the incorporation of diverse medical sensors via wireless connections and the live transmission of the measured vital signals over public wireless networks to healthcare providers. This paper discusses different scenarios where this wearable health monitoring system can be used and different types of sensors are used to measure the different parameters such as temperatures, glucose, heart beats, ECG, EEG, etc. Finally, through a case study, we demonstrate how the diabetic patient takes the advantage of this system. Keywords: WBAN (Wireless Body Area Network; Sensor; Wireless network; medical server; PDA (personal digital access). 1. Introduction Body area network (BAN), wireless body area network (WBAN) or body sensor network (BSN) is terms used to describe the application of wearable computing devices. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ * Corresponding author. 287 American Scientific Research Journal for Engineering, Technology, and Sciences (ASRJETS) (2017) Volume 31, No 1, pp 287-300 This will enable wireless communication between several miniaturized body sensor units (BSU) and a single body central unit (BCU) worn at the body. The development of WBAN technology started around 1995 by considering wireless personal area network (WPAN) technologies for communications on, near and around the human body. Later around 2001, this application of WPAN has been named as body area network (BAN) to represent the communications on, in and near the body only. A WBAN [4] system can use WPAN wireless technologies as gateways to reach longer ranges. The rapid growth in physiological sensors, low power integrated circuits and wireless communication has enabled a new generation of wireless sensor network. These wireless sensor networks are used to monitor traffic, crops, infrastructure and health. The body area network field is an interdisciplinary area which could allow inexpensive and continuous health monitoring with real-time updates of medical records via internet. A number of intelligent physiological sensors [2] can be integrated into a wearable wireless body area network, which can be used for computer assisted rehabilitation or early detection of medical conditions. This area relies on the feasibility of implanting very small bio-sensors inside the human body that are comfortable and that don't impair normal activities. The implanted sensors in the human body will collect various physiological changes in order to monitor the patient's health status in spite of their location. The information will be transmitted wirelessly to an external processing unit. 1.1 Applications Initial applications of BANs are expected to appear primarily in the healthcare domain, especially for continuous monitoring [8] and logging vital parameters of patients suffering from chronic diseases such as diabetes, asthma and heart attacks. • A WBAN network is place on a patient can alert the hospital, even before they have a heart attack, through measuring changes in their vital signs. • A WBAN network on a diabetic patient could auto inject insulin though a pump, as soon as their insulin level declines. Other applications of this technology include sports, military, or security. Extending the technology to new areas could also assist communication by seamless exchanges of information between individuals, or between individual and machines. 1.2 Components A typical BAN or BSN requires vital sign monitoring sensors, motion detectors (through accelerometer) to help identify the location of the monitored individual and some form of communication, to transmit vital sign and motion readings to medical practitioners or care givers. A typical body area network kit will consist of sensors, a Processor, a transceiver and a battery. Physiological sensors, such as ECG and SpO2 sensors, have been developed. Other sensors such as a blood pressure sensor, EEG sensor and a PDA for BSN interface are development. 288 American Scientific Research Journal for Engineering, Technology, and Sciences (ASRJETS) (2017) Volume 31, No 1, pp 287-300 2. WBAN technologies WBAN may involve different technologies at different levels; a comprehensive study of the main proposed technologies for WBAN [7,5]is as follows : 2.1 Bluetooth It is designed as a short range wireless communication standard, intended to maintain high levels of security. In this technology, each device can simultaneously communicate with up to seven other devices within a single piconet, an ad hoc network including one device acting as a master and up to seven others as slaves for the lifetime of the piconet. The main attractive characteristic of Bluetooth is to allow a wide range of Bluetooth enabled devices to connect and communicate with each other, almost everywhere in the world. Another key feature is the ability of devices to communicate without need of line-of-sight positioning of connected devices. Thus, it is widely used for connecting a variety of personally carried devices to support data and voice applications. Bluetooth devices operate in the 2.4 GHz ISM band (Industrial, Scientific and Medical band), utilizing frequency hopping among 79 1 MHz channels at a nominal rate of 1600 hops/sec to reduce interference. Bluetooth gives coverage from 1 to 100m with maximum data rate of 3 Mbps. 2.2 Bluetooth Low Energy A derived option of the Bluetooth standard is the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) [5], which was introduced as a more suitable choice for WBAN applications where less power consumption is possible using low duty cycle operation. Bluetooth LE was designed to wirelessly connect small devices to mobile terminals. Those devices are often too tiny to bear the power consumption as well as cost associated with a standard Bluetooth radio, but are ideal choices for the health-monitoring applications. Bluetooth Low Energy technology is expected to provide a data rate of up to 1 Mbps. Using fewer channels for pairing devices, synchronization can be done in a few milliseconds compared to Bluetooth seconds. This benefits latency-critical BAN applications, like alarm generation and emergency response, and enhances power saving. Its nominal data rate, low latency and low energy consumption make BLE suitable for communication between the wearable sensor nodes and the access point (AP). Moreover, adaptive frequency hop spread spectrum allows BLE to co-exist with Wi-Fi. BLE is most convenient for short-term high data rate applications in which two peer to peer devices are connected in an ad hoc configuration, such as between two personal servers of two WBANs or between a WBAN and a personal computer. 2.3 Zigbee and 802.15.4 ZigBee is one of the wireless network technologies which is widely used from the low power environment. ZigBee is targeted at radio-frequency applications that require a low data rate, long battery life and secure networking, thanks to its 128-bit security support to perform authentication and guarantee integrity and privacy of messages. Through the sleep mode, ZigBee enabled devices are capable of being operational for several years before their batteries need to be replaced. ZigBee technology is separated into two parts. First, ZigBee alliance designates the application layers, defining the network, security and application software layers. Second, IEEE 289 American Scientific Research Journal for Engineering, Technology, and Sciences (ASRJETS) (2017) Volume 31, No 1, pp 287-300 802.15.4 standard defines the physical and medium access control layers, where access to wireless channel is through employing unslotted/slotted CSMA/CA (Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance) mechanism for channel access and handling guaranteed time slot (GTS) allocation and management. ZigBee- based wireless devices operate in 868 MHz, 915 MHz, and 2.4 GHz frequency bands. Thus, one significant disadvantage of Zigbee for WBAN applications is due to interference with wireless local area network (WLAN) transmission, especially in 2.4 GHz where numerous wireless systems operate. Another disadvantage of Zigbee is related to its low data rate (250 Kbps), which makes it inappropriate for large-scale and real time WBAN applications. In fact, due to the low data rate, it is difficult to implement in hospitals or clinics (multiple patients);