Search

The investigation into potential hazards linked with millimeter-wave (mmWave) radiation is crucial, given the widespread adoption of body-centric wireless sensor nodes operating within this frequency band. This is particularly pertinent in light of its envisaged use for the upcoming 5G/6G networks and beyond. As 6G is anticipated to leverage a broad spectrum, including both sub-6 GHz and mmWave bands (30–300 GHz), concerns arise regarding increased human exposure to non-ionizing radiation (NIR). This work highlights the advantages of deploying 6G in the mmWave band, focusing on evaluating human body exposure to NIR interactions. Additionally, this research aims to address mmWave NIR exposure by introducing a Distributed Base Station (DBS) network. Utilizing low-power remote antennas to extend network coverage, the DBS architecture seeks to effectively minimize NIR's impact without compromising overall network performance. The findings underscore the significant potential of the DBS approach in mitigating NIR-related concerns associated with mmWave utilization in 6G networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In modern era wireless sensor networks used in many areas like military, engineering, surveillance, agriculture, healthcare, home etc. Healthcare is one of the most important areas where wireless sensor networks play an important role. In this paper a detailed review on wireless sensor networks in healthcare system is presented to find out the best communication technology and sensors used in healthcare system. Various sensors (pulse oximetry sensor, sweat rate sensor, glucose sensor, acceleration sensor and ECG electrode) are used in healthcare system are presented in this paper. Several communication techniques (Bluetooth, Zigbee, NFC, UWB and Wi-Fi) are used in healthcare system also discussed. Out of these all-communication technologies UWB is more powerful and widely used in recent time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: In the present scenario, wireless body area network (WBAN) use case has gone beyond medical monitoring (e.g., E‐Healthcare) and has become a vital part of our daily lives. WBANs, applied in E‐Healthcare systems, extract the physiological parameters through the implanted (in‐body) and/or wearable (on‐body) sensors applied to the human body and route them to the remote server in a systematized and well‐grounded manner. Thus, routing is the most primitive and non‐trivial task in WBANs for prompt and proper delivery of sensed data. The design of routing protocol is crucial for efficacious communication and high network performance. Therefore, the target of this paper is to present an all‐encompassing taxonomy of the state‐of‐the‐art routing protocols in WBANs. Firstly, this paper provides an insight into WBANs and their related projects. Next, WBAN routing challenges are explored, and after clustering these challenges based on their operating mechanism, the routing protocols are categorized into eight categories, which correspond to cluster‐ and tree‐based, cross‐layer‐based, fuzzy‐based, interference‐based, posture‐based, QoS‐based, SDN‐based, and temperature‐based routing protocols. Furthermore, comparison tables highlighting the goals, strengths, limitations, and novelty of each protocol, along with a qualitative comparison table of the routing protocols for each category based on their features are furnished. This exhaustive survey can serve as a starting point for WBAN researchers, as open research issues have been highlighted in the discussion section. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wireless body area networks (WBANs) are a low-cost solution for healthcare applications. However, in these networks, a huge amount of transmission is required to record the patient's status, leading to reduce energy rapidly. To solve this problem, adjusting the sampling rate based on the patient's condition is among efficient methods to save energy. However, most sampling rate methods have two drawbacks: 1-They do not estimate adaptive sampling rate for multiple sensors based on the patient's condition simultaneously. 2-They are not high-level data fusion methods. To solve these problems, a fuzzy data fusion method called fuzzy adaptive sampling rate with local emergency detection (FASR-LED) is proposed in this paper. FASR-LED has two stages: (1) At the node level, the local emergency detection system deletes redundant data that considers patient conditions. (2) At the coordinator level, a fuzzy adaptive sampling rate is proposed as an inference engine to reduce energy consumption. The coordinator level by a fuzzy inference engine gives vital signs of the sensors as inputs and estimates the sampling rate as output. The main advantages of FASR-LED are: (1) Data fusion is done by a fuzzy high-level method to estimate the sampling rate. Therefore, data validity is increased by a fuzzy approach. (2) Medical diagnoses based on analyzing the vital signs are made faster due to the same sampling rate of all sensors. Since WBAN's sensors with different sampling rates need more complex synchronization methods, FASR-LED does not require synchronizing the sensors. (3) FASR-LED reduces the energy consumption of WBAN by creating high-level data. Simulations are performed on MIMIC I and MIMIC II datasets to evaluate the proposed method. Results show that FASR-LED, compared to other methods, overcomes others in terms of energy consumption by 50% and data reduction by 30%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel conformal quasi‐yagi antenna and its Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) implementations for wireless body area networks (WBAN) application is reported in this letter. The antenna is developed on a 0.05 mm thin polyimide substrate making the antenna more flexible and conformal. The footprint of the proposed antenna is 35 × 35 mm with a dual dipole arm‐like structure making it resonant at 2.45 and 3.5 GHz covering the industrial scientific and medical and 5G bands for WBAN communications. The antenna is excited using a microstrip‐to‐slotline termination suitably terminated by a circular patch to realize the impedance matching. The ground plane is shaped to maintain good isolation between neighboring antennas during the eight‐element MIMO antenna development. The MIMO antennas are arranged circularly to achieve good antenna coverage along the azimuth directions. The antenna generates a tangential radiation pattern to the plane of the human body making it suitable for on‐body wireless communications. The proposed antenna offers a rotatable radiation pattern by appropriately choosing the antenna port of excitation. The proposed MIMO antenna offers an average gain of 4.5 and 5.2 dBi at 2.45 and 3.5 GHz, respectively. The MIMO antenna parameters are evaluated and presented. The calculated MIMO parameters are within the acceptable limits. Thus, the flexible nature with rotatable directional radiation patterns has made this antenna an attractive choice for on‐body communications in WBAN. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigators are looking at radio frequency ranges that may suit cellular data consumers' growing requirements. Terahertz's (THz) frequency range is vital for high-speed data communication in wireless gadgets and has indignant the interest of researchers. A novel spiral-shaped patch and diffracted ground-based MIMO antenna structure are presented. The overall dimensions of the structure are 600 µm by 800 µm. The polyamide material is used as a substrate. The analysis among 1 × 1, 1 × 2, 2 × 1 and 2 × 2 MIMO antenna structures are carried out. Performance in reflectance response, Bandwidth, gain, radiation pattern and directivity are analyzed. The proposed structure provides the multiband response with a minimum reflectance response of − 30.51 dB, a bandwidth of 10 THz, peak isolation of 36.99 dB, a maximum normalized directivity of 1030 and a peak gain of 39 dB. ECC TARC, CCL and D.G. were considered for the performance observation. A comparison of the presented structure with other articles is included in the manuscript. The proposed work suits biomedical imaging, short-distance communication, healthcare and WBAN applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this era of increased technological and medical advancements, remote monitoring of patients and elderly people has become more popular. Even in situations like the Covid'19 pandemic, the hospital and medical facilities are in demand. In such scenarios, elderly people who need medical care and patients who need round-the-clock medical attention can be made to stay in their homes and can be monitored remotely with the help of a remote patient monitoring system. Such a system can be built by incorporating Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN). WBAN encompasses various biological wearable sensors which monitor the patient's health around the clock. The accumulated sensor data is then shared with hospitals and medical professionals through wireless sensor networks. This data includes personnel details, various vital parameters, medical images, etc. which are highly confidential. So providing security and confidentiality in such networks is mandatory. Several cryptographic mechanisms and algorithms are available for ensuring security in WBANs. In recent days several works have been proposed to incorporate the emerging Blockchain technology to improve the privacy, security, and confidentiality in WBANs. In this survey, we discuss various research that proposed blockchain-based solutions for ensuring security, integrity, and data privacy in WBAN. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The exponential proliferation of wearable medical apparatus and healthcare information within the framework of the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) introduces supplementary complexities pertaining to the elevated Quality of Service (QoS) of intelligent healthcare in the forthcoming 6G era. Healthcare services and applications need ultra-reliable data transfer and processing with ultra-low latency and energy usage. Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) and Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) technologies enabled IoMT to handle large amounts of data sensing, transmission, and processing while maintaining good QoS. Traditional frame aggregation (FA) systems in WBAN, on the other hand, create an excessive number of control frames during data transmission, resulting in significant latency and energy consumption, as well as a lack of flexibility. A Federated Reinforcement Learning (FRL) based TO Approach is recommended in this research. In the beginning, different types of service-related information were separated into queues with equal QoS needs. The duration of the FA was then automatically determined by the aggregation vertex based on energy consumption, latency, and throughput using FRL. Finally, based on the existing status, the amount of tasks offloaded was determined. The simulation results demonstrate that, as compared to the baseline schemes, the suggested FRLTO efficiently reduces energy consumption and latency while enhancing throughput and total WBAN utilization. Numerical results show that the proposed scheme improves the throughput by 37.06% and reduced the energy consumption by around 69.84% and time delay by about 6.23%, as compared to the state-of-the-art existing baseline schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) play a vital role in healthcare monitoring, using wireless sensors to track physiological parameters and predict illness onset. This study proposes a novel approach for detecting interference and malicious sensor nodes in WBANs, crucial for maintaining system integrity and performance. The method combines feature-based techniques with classification strategies to accurately identify anomalies. Features are taken from WBAN nodes and used to train Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifiers, which makes interference detection work well. A neurofuzzy inference system (ANFIS) classifier is also used to train the system on trusted and untrusted nodes at the start, which makes classification easier in real-world WBAN situations. Link failures due to rogue sensor nodes can severely impact WBAN performance, emphasizing the need for efficient detection and correction mechanisms. The proposed strategy introduces a weight metric to identify broken links, enhancing system reliability. Evaluation metrics, including LFD latency and packet delivery ratio, are analyzed to assess the efficacy of the approach. By improving interference detection and addressing link failures, this study contributes to enhancing the efficiency and reliability of WBAN networks, critical for advancing healthcare monitoring technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In critical pandemic situations, the Telecare Medical Information System (TMIS) is a technological invention that offers secure and authentic patient registration and medical services remotely. Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) uses TMIS to facilitate users/patients with remote medical services. Numerous schemes for authentication have been developed for secure and authentic communication to prevent security attacks encompassing replay, impersonation, and forgery attacks. Ryu et al. have proposed an ECC-based mutual authentication scheme in 2022. Nevertheless, through security scheme analysis, we have evidenced that Ryu et al.'s scheme has a trapdoor for insider attacks and privileged insider attacks. Their proposed scheme offers no assurance of server anonymity. In this paper, we propose a three-factor authentication system based on ECC that protects sensitive patient data from getting out during communication and protects against different types of security attacks. We have conducted an informal security analysis to verify that our scheme withstands security attacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Networks play an important role in the day-to-day life of every individual. Networks are involved in the transmission of necessary information between the sender and receiver in the channel. Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) is a major advancement in the field of network communication. Due to the arrival of the Micro Electromechanical System (MEMS) and several intelligent sensors, collaboration with WBAN makes accurate predictions of parameters in the human body. WBAN has numerous applications in medical and non-medical fields. WBANs have demonstrated remarkable capabilities in real-time health monitoring, facilitating the collection of vital physiological data from individuals in diverse environments. Firstly, their low-power and energy-efficient design ensures prolonged device operation, making them suitable for continuous monitoring over extended periods. Additionally, the miniaturization of sensors and the integration of wireless communication technologies enable seamless data transmission to centralized healthcare systems. Furthermore, the integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms in WBAN systems has enabled personalized health analytics, allowing for more precise and context-aware health monitoring. This paper gives a survey of the WBAN standard, security in WBAN, several authentication approaches, routing, and MAC protocols. In addition, this paper describes the challenges faced by WBAN, such as network partitioning, changes in postures, lifetime issues, and quality of service (QoS). At last, the advancement in WBAN is for future improvement in the area of body area networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document is a summary of the journal article titled "Energy Harvesters and Self-Powered Sensors for Smart Electronics, 2nd Edition" published in Micromachines. The article discusses the importance of energy harvesting technologies in the development of sustainable power supply for Internet of Things (IoT) networks. It highlights various energy harvesting mechanisms such as piezoelectric, triboelectric, electromagnetic, thermoelectric, and photovoltaic, and their applications in continuous power feeding and zero-powered sensing. The article also provides an overview of 10 published articles in the special issue, which cover topics such as rotational energy harvesting, airflow energy harvesting, RF signal acquisition, hybrid energy harvesting, piezoelectric MEMS speakers, cluster-based cooperative spectrum sensing, power management circuits, and a review of energy harvesting strategies. The conclusion emphasizes the need for further advancements in adaptability, robustness, and intelligence of energy harvesting devices and self-powered IoT systems. [Extracted from the article]

A screen-printed wearable coplanar waveguide (CPW) fed semi-octagonal shaped antenna is developed on a denim textile substrate to resonate at 2.45 GHz for wireless medical body area network communications. The antenna is integrated with a circular ring-type electromagnetic bandgap structure (EBG) to mitigate performance degradation due to the high permittivity of the tissue model when it works on body conditions. The CPW antenna and EBG surfaces are fabricated using the screen-printing method, which provides good conformability, good wearable comfortability, and light weight. The proposed EBG integrated antenna has dimensions of 0.66λ × 0.66λ × 0.056λ and an impedance bandwidth of 13% (2.3-2.62 GHz) with a gain of 6.7 dB. The specific absorption rates (SARs) of the antenna are 0.309 W/kg and 0.14 W/kg for 1 g and 10 g of tissue, respectively, which are within the wearable safety limits. Thus, the fabricated prototype antenna is suitable for wearable WBAN and MBAN applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this research work, a flexible polymer-based compact wearable antenna has been designed, fabricated, and analysed for Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) IoT enabled applications. The antenna is fabricated on a Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) with λL as the lowest operating free-space wavelength resonating for sub-6 GHz band at 2.4 GHz, 3.3 GHz, 4.1 GHz and 5.8 GHz. Periodic Frequency Selective Surface (FSS) reflector is used which reduces Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) antenna and enhances the gain of the antenna. The simulation results prove that this flexible wearable antenna radiates an increased gain of approximately 10 dB and returns loss of -36 dB at the lowest frequency with FSS as a reflector. The simulation results are validated by experimental results which offer a good agreement. An average SAR value of l.5 watts/gm is measured within the specific safety limit which makes it feasible for practical implementation. This antenna provides better isolation against on-body losses and reduces SAR value with improved radiation efficiency for WBAN IoT enabled applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Infrastructure‐less networks connect communication devices end‐to‐end by managing links and routes independent of fixed networking facilities, relying on dedicated protocols running on end‐user devices. The large variety of infrastructure‐less concepts and related aspects can be confusing both for beginning Ph.D. students as well as experienced researchers who wish to get an overview of neighbouring areas to their own research foci. Frequently discussed topics such as different types of sensor‐, vehicular‐, or opportunistic networks are covered. The authors describe different networking concepts by looking at aspects such as the main properties, common applications, and ongoing research. Furthermore, the concepts by common characteristics such as node mobility, network density, or power consumption are compared. The authors also discuss network performance evaluation by describing commonly used metrics, different evaluation techniques, and software tools for simulation‐based evaluation. The references given in each section help obtain in‐depth information about the presented topics and give hints about open research questions, which can be a starting point for own investigations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The aim of this work is to assess the performance of various inkjet printing techniques. These techniques are aimed at optimizing the volume of conductive ink used in the fabrication of inkjet printed Radio Frequency Identification tags. It is also possible that they can be used in fabricating other electronic and electromagnetic devices and structures. Three ink optimization approaches were examined viz. gridded (meshed) designs, conductive area trimming and selective ink deposition. The volume of conductive ink utilized in tag fabrication and the measured on‐body (forearm) read range of the tag were used to develop a figure of merit which determined the best printing approach. Although the longest read range was obtained from the tag with 48% conductive area trimming (Trim 1), the best figure of merit, that is, the tag with the best balance between measured read range and utilized conductive ink, was obtained from the tag that had its surface area trimmed by 65% (Trim 2). It is however suggested that optimum use of conductive ink would be achieved with a combination of 65% surface area trimming and selective ink deposition technique.

Wearable flexible electronic devices are increasingly becoming an important part of the future rolling touch screen, health care equipment, electronic skin and other fields. It is worth noting that piezoelectric sensors are widely used because of their self‐powered capability, fast response, and relatively simple circuits. Among them, Indium‐tin‐zinc oxide thin‐film transistor (ITZO TFT) has high field effect mobility, low energy consumption, and can be used as an amplifier for signal amplification of flexible sensing systems. In this paper, we constructed a flexible piezoelectric sensor (PZ) based on electrospun PVDF and hydrothermally assisted growth of ZnO nanorods. Besides, this PZ sensor has higher sensitivity than the individual PVDF piezoelectric sensor. The sensor can not only be used for detection of static objects, but also for the capture of tiny physiological signals of human body, such as vibration of vocal cords, pulse beat, etc., showing superiority in dynamic and static signal detection. At the same time, the sensor can be integrated with ITZO TFT, which can still achieve stable signal acquisition and show application prospects as future brain‐computer interface and intelligent robotics manufacturing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microwave (MW) sensing is regarded as a promising technique for various medical monitoring and diagnostic applications due to its numerous advantages and the potential to be developed into a portable device for use outside hospital settings. The detection of skull fractures and the monitoring of their healing process would greatly benefit from a rapidly and frequently usable application that can be employed outside the hospital. This paper presents a simulation- and experiment-based study on skull fracture detection with the MW technique using realistic models for the first time. It also presents assessments on the most promising frequency ranges for skull fracture detection within the Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) and ultrawideband (UWB) ranges. Evaluations are carried out with electromagnetic simulations using different head tissue layer models corresponding to different locations in the human head, as well as an anatomically realistic human head simulation model. The measurements are conducted with a real human skull combined with tissue phantoms developed in our laboratory. The comprehensive evaluations show that fractures cause clear differences in antenna and channel parameters (S11 and S21). The difference in S11 is 0.1–20 dB and in S21 is 0.1–30 dB, depending on the fracture width and location. Skull fractures with a less than 1 mm width can be detected with microwaves at different fracture locations. The detectability is frequency dependent. Power flow representations illustrate how fractures impact on the signal propagation at different frequencies. MW-based detection of skull fractures provides the possibility to (1) detect fractures using a safe and low-cost portable device, (2) monitor the healing-process of fractures, and (3) bring essential information for emerging portable MW-based diagnostic applications that can detect, e.g., strokes.

Signal loss models are frequently utilized by wireless communication researchers and engineers to predict received signal strength, optimize system parameters, and conduct feasibility studies. However, novel communication methods such as Body-Coupled Communication (BCC) that are suitable for Body Area Networks formed by wearable devices currently lack readily available signal propagation models. In this data article, we present a galvanic-coupled BCC signal loss and bioimpedance dataset, which serves as a foundation for building such models. This extensive dataset consists of experimental data recorded from 30 volunteer test subjects. The experimental setup involves a tunable signal generator transmitting continuous wave signals, along with two oscilloscopes recording the transmitter-side and receiver-side voltages. From these measurements, we compute the signal loss over the body, and the transmitter-side impedance. The transmitted signal frequencies range from 50 kHz to 20 MHz, with discrete steps. The primary application of this dataset is to enable empirical-data-supported modeling in the human body as a BCC signal propagation medium, which will help to explore how the properties of the human body, the measurement locations, and the signal frequency impact the signal loss.

The wearable ultra-wideband antenna that is appropriate for body area networks is designed and implemented in this article. Stepped circular radiation patches, microstrip feeders, and trapezoidal floors make up the majority of the antenna. Good bending qualities have been attained by using liquid crystal polymer, a flexible material, as a dielectric substrate. An antenna measuring 30 mm × 35 mm × 0.1 mm was designed with two C-shaped slots etched on it to achieve notch function in the 3.20–4.10 GHz and 5.19–5.98 GHz frequency bands. Its working frequency range was 1.96–11.61 GHz, and its specific absorption rate for the human body was less than 2 W/kg. The test findings demonstrate that ultra-wideband body area network systems can be implemented using the antenna impedance and radiation characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) are an emerging industrial technology for monitoring physiological data. These networks employ medical wearable and implanted biomedical sensors aimed at improving quality of life by providing body-oriented services through a variety of industrial sensing gadgets. The sensors collect vital data from the body and forward this information to other nodes for further services using short-range wireless communication technology. In this paper, we provide a multi-aspect review of recent advancements made in this field pertaining to cross-domain security, privacy, and trust issues. The aim is to present an overall review of WBAN research and projects based on applications, devices, and communication architecture. We examine current issues and challenges with WBAN communications and technologies, with the aim of providing insights for a future vision of remote healthcare systems. We specifically address the potential and shortcomings of various Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) architectures and communication schemes that are proposed to maintain security, privacy, and trust within digital healthcare systems. Although current solutions and schemes aim to provide some level of security, several serious challenges remain that need to be understood and addressed. Our aim is to suggest future research directions for establishing best practices in protecting healthcare data. This includes monitoring, access control, key management, and trust management. The distinguishing feature of this survey is the combination of our review with a critical perspective on the future of WBANs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data and information secrecy during storage or transmission has been preserved through the use of cryptography. Consequently, cryptography studies have also progressed from traditional Caesar cipher to the existing cryptographic protocols depending on quantum computing, starting with the latest modular arithmetic-based cryptosystems. The strength of modular arithmetic ciphers lies in the fact that they are computationally difficult to break, but with the advent of quantum computing, even these issues can be cracked with in polynomial time. Research on post-quantum cryptography began in response to this danger, with the goal of creating post-quantum algorithms that are immune to quantum computing. However, cryptographic methods confront a number of other problems, including, but not limited to, availability, integrity, and vulnerability. Despite the researchers' successes, security is still a major issue for Quantum Computing. Because of its many advantages, cyberspace has quickly become the most common medium for disseminating information. Because of the exponential growth of science and technology, notably quantum computers, cyber security is now the top priority for the Internet and other wireless systems. The fundamental goal of this work is to create a Hybrid Quantum Cryptosystem that can be implemented in Wireless Body Sensor Networks. Using a series of comparisons with existing algorithms, we will determine how well our suggested hybrid algorithm operates in terms of key length, key generation time, decryption and encryption timings, and overall speed. The proposed approach attains 10.3 minimal rate of error, which outperforms the existing state-of-art techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wireless energy and information transfer have been effectively employed to facilitate reliable operation and communication among sensor nodes of wireless body area networks (WBANs). This work, therefore, presents the recent advances related to wireless power transfer (WPT)/simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) applied in WBAN composed of on-/in-body sensors for healthcare monitoring. A comprehensive overview of WPT/SWIPT-enabled WBANs was provided by characterizing them regarding the system requirements, network architecture, device design, and channel modeling. Considering the system requirements, optimization and performance analysis are identified as major tools to enhance and quantify the system's efficiency. Given the power scarcity issue, it is also imperative to ensure robust, user-friendly, and long-term WBAN operation; accordingly, existing battery-assisted and battery-free device designs are discussed. Furthermore, different network topologies, varying from single-input-single-output to multiple-input-multiple-output, are required to maintain WBAN applications. Therefore, this survey includes the network architecture as an important classification category requiring close attention. Additionally, understanding propagation models is indispensable to building competent WBAN. This review describes channel modeling from the perspective of stochastic and deterministic environments. In summary, this paper aims to serve as a comprehensive reference, providing readers with an insightful exploration of WPT/SWIPT-enabled WBANs, addressing their both advantages and limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low-power wireless sensing-based networks suffer from many constraints and challenges. In this research work, efficient power source has been designed to provide the need of energy for the Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) and Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs). The energy sources are the main challenge and constraint these wireless networks applications. This paper discusses recent researcher's works which considered the energy constraints of the WSN and WMSN with their proposed security techniques. The main idea of this presented work is the energy harvesting through extracting the electrical energy from the audio/acoustic signal/energy, this utilized audio/acoustic source in this scenario is the disk jockey. To maximize the produced power from the proposed acoustic energy harvesting Piezo-based several parameters is studied. The parameters are considered in this research work are the method of Piezo-transducers connections, the distance of sound source, the sound intensity variation and the sound concentrating tube length. These tubes are mounted on slim diaphragm two maximize the energy harvesting. The piezoelectric transducer array scenario is designed using four piezoelectric transducers utilizing different connect ion methods, series, parallel and in hybrid. Several practically experiments are performed on the presented different scenarios to evaluate the proposed energy harvesting efficiency. These experiments reveal that the superiority of the proposed acoustic energy harvesting technique with low power complexity wireless networks and suitable with the different presented scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Due to their flexibility and superior performance, machine learning models frequently complement and outperform traditional statistical survival models. However, their widespread adoption is hindered by a lack of user-friendly tools to explain their internal operations and prediction rationales. To tackle this issue, we introduce the survex R package, which provides a cohesive framework for explaining any survival model by applying explainable artificial intelligence techniques. The capabilities of the proposed software encompass understanding and diagnosing survival models, which can lead to their improvement. By revealing insights into the decision-making process, such as variable effects and importances, survex enables the assessment of model reliability and the detection of biases. Thus, transparency and responsibility may be promoted in sensitive areas, such as biomedical research and healthcare applications. Availability and implementation survex is available under the GPL3 public license at https://github.com/modeloriented/survex and on CRAN with documentation available at https://modeloriented.github.io/survex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A wireless body area network (WBAN) connects separate sensors in many places of the human body, such as clothes, under the skin. WBAN can be used in many domains such as health care, sports, and control system. In this paper, a scheme focused on managing a patient’s health care is presented based on building a WBAN that consists of three components, biometric sensors, mobile applications related to the patient, and a remote server. An excellent scheme is proposed for the patient’s device, such as a mobile phone or a smartwatch, which can classify the signal coming from a biometric sensor into two types, normal and abnormal. In an abnormal signal, the device can carry out appropriate activities for the patient without requiring a doctor as a first case. The patient does not respond to the warning message in a critical case sometimes, and the personal device sends an alert to the patient’s family, including his/her location. The proposed scheme can preserve the privacy of the sensitive data of the patient in a protected way and can support several security features such as mutual authentication, key management, anonymous password, and resistance to malicious attacks. These features have been proven depending on the Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications. Moreover, the computation and communication costs are efficient compared with other related schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The body area networks (BAN) structure is one of the advancements in health monitoring innovations and the sharp rise in healthcare demand. With the help of a network of constantly running sensors, BAN technology aims to monitor vital physiological and physical features like accessibility, respiration, and blood sugar levels. The achievement of BAN technology depends on wireless communication since it gives the user flexibility and versatility. Most BAN solutions have effectively employed radio frequency (RF) wireless technology, although these systems are battery-intensive, prone to electromagnetic interference, and have security weaknesses. The human body is the signal transmission medium in the alternative wireless communication technology called human body communication (HBC). HBC possesses traits that could logically deal with the problems with RF for wireless body area networks (WBAN) technology. This overview looks at the ongoing research in this field and highlights the principles of the HBC, the most recent studies of HBC, human body coupling approaches, the designs of HBC transceivers, and the unresolved research issues. HBC provides promising future possibilities for making WBAN technologies more useful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A type-1 diabetic patient needs an exogenous insulin dose based on the blood glucose level to avoid hyper/hypoglycemia. In this paper, we propose a control system for maintaining the blood glucose level of type −1 diabetic patients within the normal range. The proposed protocol consists of a Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) and a controller. The WBAN senses blood glucose and insulin concentration at regular intervals. The controller takes meal quantity as an input and estimates the maximum glucose level. The estimated glucose level is further used to predict the required insulin dose considering the patient-specific insulin sensitivity information. This insulin dose is then injected into the patient using an insulin pump. The proposed protocol is helpful for self-monitoring and automatic controlling of blood glucose level for type-1 diabetic patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The creation of a network of tiny sensors installed in, on or around the human body has been facilitated by advancements in wireless communications and wearable devices. Because of its potential to transform healthcare delivery, Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) has been increasingly important in modern medical systems over the last decade. Individual nodes (sensors and actuators) embedded in a person's clothing, body, or skin form a WBAN. Both academia and industry have increased their efforts in WBAN research and development. The wearable antenna, whether on or off the human body, is a critical component of contact with particular design in WBAN networks. Ultra-wideband (UWB) technology can provide high-capacity, short-range communications with minimal energy consumption, which is appropriate for wireless body area networks. The human body's involvement in such a device creates significant challenges for both the wearable antenna's construction and the broadcast paradigm. To achieve many functionalities, multi-band and broadband antennas are better solutions. The proposed multi-band antenna is constructed from a FR4 substrate with dimensions of (24 × 25 × 1.6) mm3. The proposed design was successfully tested with different configurations and enhanced with a broad impedance bandwidth of over 100 percent, where the UWB frequency spectrum encompassed the range from 3 to 9 GHz with a reflective coefficient of −15 dB and gain of 2.5 dBi, as well as fair radiation patterns in the Federal Communications Commission range. The SAR value of the devised antenna with and without SRR being 2 W/kg, 3.5 W/kg, respectively. This solution may be a worthy contender for meeting the UWB demands as a result, could be an excellent fit for wireless body technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Telecare Medical Information System (TMIS) is gaining importance in the present COVID-19 crisis. TMIS as a technology, offers patients a range of remote medical services, incorporated into Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN). The patient's medical report is confidentially transmitted over an open channel in TMIS environments. An attacker may attempt to compromise the security, such as forgery, replay, and impersonation attacks. To ensure secure communication, various authentication solutions have been introduced for TMIS. Biometrics and Elliptic Curve Cryptography-based mutual authentication protocol was recommended by Sahoo et al. (2020) and is proved to have some loopholes in the protocol. We discovered, however, Sahoo et al. method is unable to prevent privileged insider attacks and insider attacks along with patient anonymity. Jongseok Ryu et al. recommended a ECC based three-factor mutual authentication protocol and ensures patient's confidentiality for TMIS with proof of informal analysis. They have also performed formal security studies utilizing the Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA), the Burrows-Abadi-Needham (BAN) logic and Real-Or-Random (ROR) model. However, we have reviewed the Jongseok Ryu et al.'s proposal. Based on his attacker model, we have examined that this scheme is unsafe against Message Substitution Attacks, Man-in-the-Middle attacks, Session Key Disclosure attacks, Privileged Insider attacks, and Stolen verifier attacks. we suggest a technique to be safe from the above security threats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel strip line fed, circularly polarized (CP), annular slotted dual band antenna using hybrid electromagnetic band gap (EBG) structure for Global Positioning System (GPS) has been herein designed, analyzed, and investigated for wearable applications. Adjusting the radii of the annular slots on the radiating patch excellent circular polarized (CP) radiation and impedance matching is achieved. The design demonstrates Kapton based flexible, robust, and low-profile solution with permittivity of 3.4 to meet the requirements of wearable applications. Due to the high losses of the animal body, the electromagnetic band gap (EBG) structure is used to reduce back radiation and the effect of frequency detuning. The proposed antenna structure also enhances the front-to-back ratio (FBR) by 10 dB. This antenna with dimensions 0.56λ0 × 0.4913λ0 × 0.002λ0 analyzed using a flexible Kapton substrate. Optimized hybrid EBG structure provides an excellent Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) along with all other antenna parameters, within acceptable for GPS-based wearable applications at 1.13 GHz and 1.157 GHz frequency band. Therefore the proposed antenna is a suitable candidate for GPS-based tracking and wireless body area network (WBAN) applications. The proposed antenna was also tested upon fabrication and the measured results agree with simulated results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The design and analysis of the electrically small eight-shaped wearable antenna for both on- and off-body communication is proposed in this paper. An eight-shaped radiating structure is placed over the jeans substrate and an I-shaped slot is introduced in the ground plane which makes the antenna resonates at the ISM-I band (2.4 GHz). The antenna has a compact size of 0.30λ0 × 0.20λ0 × 0.001λ0, where λ0 is the free space wavelength at the resonance frequency. The impedance bandwidth (≤−10 dB) of the antenna is 6.1 % and 5.8 % in free space and presence of a human body phantom respectively. The antenna design exhibits good gain along with an improved omnidirectional radiation pattern. The specific absorption rate (SAR) of the antenna averaged over 1 g of tissue is 0.21 W/kg at 2.45 GHz which is far below the FCC standard. The paper also discusses the bending analysis and the fundamental size limitations of the small antenna, concluding that it is suitable for practical use. The simulated results of the prototype are validated by the measured results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper, introduce a wireless body area network antenna array with beam steering that is fed by a branch line coupler (BLC). The proposed BLC feeding network and the antenna are fabricated on wearable jeans substrate, and the proposed antenna operates at the ISM-I (2.45 GHz) band. The Branch line coupler fed array antenna (BLCAA) allows for 25° of beam steering with a half-power beam width of 25° and 35° in the presence of free space and the human body, respectively. The proposed antenna's specific absorption rate was found to be 0.21 W/Kg, which complies with IEEE regulations. To assess the effect of bending on the antenna's performance, simulations and tests were conducted, revealing that the antenna's characteristics were minimally affected by bending. The BLCAA exhibits good impedance matching with high peak gain and a good radiation pattern. The simulated results are experimentally validated and found good approximation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, technology plays a vital part in our daily lives. Especially in medicine, such as consultations, examination, and operation, these processes are necessary and must be utilized accordingly. Medical checkups are required to ensure the patient’s wellbeing. However, many people suffer from severe health conditions and are not always able to leave the house for examination. They are also not aware of potential risks within their body and therefore, don’t feel the need to be examined. With the rise of new technological advantages, new solutions are being presented to tackle those issues. In the field of wireless sensor networks (WSNs), the wireless body area network (WBAN), alongside with its features and functionalities, can be regarded as one of the potential innovations for medicine, military, sport, and entertainment. With its tiny sensors, as well as with its plethora of applications, the WBAN is an excellent choice for remote medical surveillance and treatment. Furthermore, various routing protocols can provide proper solutions, depending on the application needs. However, challenges, such as energy efficiency, and security. are being further developed to improve the needs of its demands. This review is an overview of WBAN technologies, protocols, applications and potential challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the global medical community has endeavored to provide swift and efficient patient care by leveraging real-time patient databases. However, the efficacy of these systems, particularly wireless body area network (WBAN) sensors, has been undermined by inaccurate and low-performance readings, leading to unnecessary alarm triggers. This study scrutinizes the potential of data dimensionality reduction techniques and machine learning algorithms in augmenting the detection accuracy of cardiac abnormalities in WBAN sensors. Dimensionality reduction was performed using principal component analysis (PCA), independent component analysis (ICA), and spatial correlation methods. For arrhythmia prediction, Decision Tree and Multilayer Perceptron algorithms were implemented and their performance compared. Numerical simulations and Python code analysis revealed that the application of data reduction techniques significantly improved the reliability and effectiveness of WBAN sensors in handling voluminous datasets. Furthermore, the use of PCA, ICA, and spatial correlation strategies notably reduced WBAN sensor battery energy consumption, data storage needs, computational complexity, and processing time. These pragmatic solutions could potentially empower healthcare practitioners to intervene proactively before patients encounter life-threatening conditions. The results also demonstrated that feature selection effectively eliminated irrelevant attributes from noisy Electrocardiograms (ECGs), thereby enhancing the precision of the analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wireless sensors with low power consumption will play an important role in smart city applications. A power supply is required for the operation of these sensors. Considering the limited life of batteries and the need for regular maintenance, batteries are not an optimal solution for sensor networks with so many sensors. Radio Frequency Energy Harvesting (RFEH) and Wireless Power Transfer (WPT) are power supply methods that can easily supply power to low-power devices. Due to its ubiquitous nature, RF energy can be used as a source of power for wireless sensor nodes, wireless body area networks, wireless charging systems, RFID tags, and the Internet of Things. This paper presents the lifetime enhancement of the wireless sensor node based on the optimization of the SIW antenna for energy harvesting using the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) method. Here, an antenna and rectifier called a rectenna, needed by the harvesting node to convert power from free space transmitted by the base station into dc signals is designed, tested, and fabricated and the Direct Current (DC) output is used to power a low-power device. Compact structures and large arrays are possible with millimeter wave rectennas by Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW) technology is used since it has been advantageous to millimeter wave systems because it provides increased isolation and lower radiation leakage and losses. Also, we consider multi-objective multi-dimensional optimization for SIW antenna design, and geometric parameters are optimized to achieve better efficiency. The antenna is designed using HFSS, fabricated, and tested under ambient conditions and the results obtained show the percentage of lifetime of the sensor node improvement increases exponentially as the energy harvesting period increases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The advancement and innovations in wireless communication technologies including the Internet of Things have massively changed the paradigms of health-based services. In particular, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the trends of working from home have been promoted. Wireless body area network technology frameworks help sufferers in remotely obtaining scientific remedies from physicians through the Internet without paying a visit to the clinics. IoT sensor nodes are incorporated into the clinical device to allow health workers to consult the patients' fitness conditions in real time. Insecure wireless communication channels make unauthorized access to fitness-related records and manipulation of IoT sensor nodes attached to the patient's bodies possible, as a result of security flaws. As a result, IoT-enabled devices are threatened by a number of well-known attacks, including impersonation, replay, man-in-the-middle, and denial-of-service assaults. Modern authentication schemes do solve these issues, but they frequently involve challenging mathematical concepts that raise processing and transmission costs. In this paper, we propose a lightweight, secure, and efficient symmetric key exchange algorithm and remote user authentication scheme. Our research proposal presents a successful privacy-protecting method for remote users and provides protection against known attacks. When compared to conventional options, this technique significantly reduces calculation costs by up to 37.68% and transmission costs by up to 32.55%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The human body exhibits complex, spatially distributed chemo-electro-mechanical processes that must be properly captured for emerging applications in virtual/augmented reality, precision health, activity monitoring, bionics, and more. A key factor in enabling such applications involves the seamless integration of multipurpose wearable sensors across the human body in different environments, spanning from indoor settings to outdoor landscapes. Here, we report a versatile epidermal body area network ecosystem that enables wireless power and data transmission to and from battery-free wearable sensors with continuous functionality from dry to underwater settings. This is achieved through an artificial near field propagation across the chain of biocompatible, magneto-inductive metamaterials in the form of stretchable waterborne skin patches—these are fully compatible with pre-existing consumer electronics. Our approach offers uninterrupted, self-powered communication for human status monitoring in harsh environments where traditional wireless solutions (such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or cellular) are unable to communicate reliably. Body area networks represent a wearable technology suitable for applications like virtual reality and health monitoring. Here, the study presents a wireless battery-free channel that works reliably in harsh environments, including underwater. It utilizes stretchable magneto-inductive metamaterials to enable uninterrupted communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wireless body area networks (WBANs) can be used to realize the real-time monitoring and transmission of health data concerning the human body based on wireless communication technology. With the transmission of these sensitive health data, security and privacy protection issues have become increasingly prominent. Fine-grained authentication allows physicians to run authentication checks of another specific entity according to their identifying attributes. Hence, it plays a key role in preserving the security and privacy of WBANs. In recent years, substantial research has been carried out on fine-grained authentication. However, these studies have put considerable effort into WBAN performances, resulting in weakened security. This paper proposes a fine-grained user authentication and key agreement protocol based on physical unclonable functions (PUFs) while maintaining robust security and performance. This will allow physicians to perform mutual authentication and obtain key agreements with authorized body area sensor nodes according to their identity parameters, such as occupation type and title. We then provide comprehensive security and heuristic analyses to demonstrate the security of the proposed protocol. Finally, the performance comparison shows that the proposed protocol is more robust in security, cost-effective communication, and computational overheads compared to three leading alternatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In healthcare, wireless body area networks (WBANs) can be used to constantly collect patient body data and assist in real-time medical services for patients from physicians. In such security- and privacy-critical systems, the user authentication mechanism can be fundamentally expected to prevent illegal access and privacy leakage occurrences issued by hacker intrusion. Currently, a significant quantity of new WBAN-oriented authentication protocols have been designed to verify user identity and ensure that body data are accessed only with a session key. However, those newly published protocols still unavoidably affect session key security and user privacy due to the lack of forward secrecy, mutual authentication, user anonymity, etc. To solve this problem, this paper designs a robust user authentication protocol. By checking the integrity of the message sent by the other party, the communication entity verifies the other party's identity validity. Compared with existing protocols, the presented protocol enhances security and privacy while maintaining the efficiency of computation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]