Wireless Body Area Network for Medical Healthcare

A body area network is a wireless network of biomedical sensors that are attached to a human body. The aim of wireless body area network (WBAN) is to facilitate continuously recording and monitoring of a person′s health condition, if needed, over a long-distance communication network. A sensing system is to be worn by the individual for a long duration. The hardware must be compact and light. This limits the size of the battery. These factors have made energy the most critical resource in WBAN and extending system lifetime has become a priority to fully realize the capabilities of WBAN. This paper presents design and system integration of WBAN technology along with issues and technical challenges of WBAN.