Performance Study of Wireless Body Area Network in Medical Environment

Abstract

The advanced developments in sensors and wireless communications devices have enabled the design of miniature, cost-effective, and smart physiological sensor nodes. One of the approaches in developing wearable health monitoring systems is the emerging of wireless body area network (WBAN). IEEE 802.15.4 provides low power, low data rate wireless standard in relation to medical sensor body area networks. In the current study, the star network topology of 802.15.4 standard at 2.4 GHz had been considered for body area network (BAN) configured in beacon mode. The main consideration is in the total data bits received by all the nodes at the coordinator and flight times of a data packet reaching its destination. In this paper we discussed on wireless technologies that can be used for medical applications and how they perform in a healthcare environment. The low-rate Wireless Personnel Area Network (WPAN) is being used to evaluate its suitability in medical application.