Implementation of wireless body area networks for healthcare systems

This work describes the implementation of a complete wireless body-area network (WBAN) system to deploy in medical environments. Issues related to hardware implementations, software and wireless protocol designs are addressed. In addition to reviewing and discussing the current attempts in wireless body area network technology, a WBAN system that has been designed for healthcare applications will be presented in detail herein. The wireless system in the WBAN uses medical bands to obtain physiological data from sensor nodes. The medical bands are selected to reduce the interference and thus increase the coexistence of sensor node devices with other network devices available at medical centers. The collected data is transferred to remote stations with a multi-hopping technique using the medical gateway wireless boards. The gateway nodes connect the sensor nodes to the local area network or the Internet. As such facilities are already available in medical centers; medical professions can access patients’ physiological signals anywhere in the medical center. The data can also be accessed outside the medical center as they will be made available online.