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Body Area Networks in Healthcare: A Brief State of the Art
 
 
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Editorial

Special Issue on Body Area Networks

by
António Pereira
1,2,3,*,
Nuno Costa
1,3 and
Antonio Fernández-Caballero
4,5
1
School of Technology and Management, Computer Science and Communication Research Centre, Polytechnic Institute of Leiria, Campus 2, Morro do Lena—Alto do Vieiro, Apartado 4163, 2411-901 Leiria, Portugal
2
INOV INESC INOVAÇÃO, Institute of New Technologies, Leiria Office, Campus 2, Morro do Lena—Alto do Vieiro, Apartado 4163, 2411-901 Leiria, Portugal
3
Computer Science Department, School of Technology and Management, Polytechnic of Leiria, Apartado 4163, 2411-901 Leiria, Portugal
4
Departamento de Sistemas Informáticos, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 02071 Albacete, Spain
5
Biomedical Research Networking Centre in Mental Health (CIBERSAM), 28029 Madrid, Spain
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Appl. Sci. 2020, 10(10), 3540; https://doi.org/10.3390/app10103540
Submission received: 12 April 2020 / Accepted: 23 April 2020 / Published: 20 May 2020
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Body Area Networks)
Versions Notes
Wireless body area networks (WBANs) are a fascinating research field offering wearable and implantable sensor technology [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13], communications and platforms [14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21] that are revolutionizing healthcare, quality of life and interactions between physicians and patients. A WBAN is realized through the integration of different nodes (sensors and actuators) relying on different communication technologies (wired, wireless and human body communication [22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30]) to allow interconnection under skin, over skin, when embedded in clothes and in portable devices, to provide both managed and autonomous applications [31,32,33,34,35,36]. Usually, WBANs are not confined to the human body. Gateways, networks and cloud technology [37] extend the number of applications a WBAN can offer and support. One example of such applications is (remote) healthcare [38,39,40,41,42,43], where WBANs are considered a key technology to help facing the side effects of an aging population on healthcare systems and society in general.
This special issue is devoted to collecting contributions from researchers on the realization of real-world and reliable wireless body area networks, platforms and applications, addressing the major associated challenges. Nine papers have been selected for this special issue, beginning with a paper [44] that gives the reader a general overview of the WBAN research field and highlights its main features and requirements, sensor types and contributions to healthcare, concluding with the main current challenges. The other eight research papers are segmented into three main application areas: energy harvesting, communications and applications in the research field of wireless body area networks.
Energy harvesting: Under the assumption that a single energy harvester from a human body is not enough to reliably drive an electronic device, Sung-Eun et al. [45] propose energy harvesting by combining multiple energy harvesters in wireless body area network applications. An efficient 0.13-µm TSMC Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) energy management and distributing circuit is defined that is able to combine up to three sources of harvested energy and is suitable for autonomous WBANs, with a special focus on implantable devices for which it is very difficult to maintain a battery.
Communications: This special issue addresses the three physical layers defined by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.15.6 standard. Yamamoto et al. [46] focused on the human body communication (HBC) physical layer to better understand its basic signal transmission paths when relying on one-electrode and two-electrode transmitters. In terms of off-body communications, Cwalina, Ambroziak and Rajchowski [47] present a study of system loss for both 868-MHz narrow band and 6489-MHz ultra-wide band radio channels in a very harsh environment is conducted, as opposed to the majority of currently designed WBANs which are focused in indoor environments. Additionally, Cwalina et al. [48] describe a novel adaptive method for data stream allocation to increase the available time-frequency resource usage in heterogeneous WBANs with dual radio interfaces (narrow band and ultra-wide band). The communications application area ends with the proposal of an enhanced temperature-aware routing protocol, with efficient mobility, that is based on a multi-criteria decision making method. The authors suggest this as a new option to deal with the challenge of rises in node temperatures (hot spot regions) in WBANs [49].
Applications: Chen et al. [50] describe a novel lossless electroencephalography (EEG) compression Very-Large-Scale Integration (VLSI) circuit to increase both efficiency and effectivity of EEG signal transmission over WBANs with very promising results. Park et al. [51] present technology for low-power high data-rate digital capsule endoscopy with human body communication. This special issue ends with the presentation of a novel method based on an ensemble of heterogeneous classifiers that is able to recognize static, dynamic and transitional user activities [52].
In summary, this special issue includes a series of excellent research papers on body area networks, covering three important application areas.

Acknowledgments

This issue would not be possible without the contributions of the authors who submitted their valuable papers. We would like to thank all reviewers and the editorial team of Applied Sciences for their great work. This work was partially supported by Portuguese Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia—FCT, I.P., under the project UIDB/04524/2020”, by Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades, Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI)/European Regional Development Fund (FEDER, UE) under DPI2016-80894-R and PID2019-106084RB-I00 grants, by Biomedical Research Networking Centre in Mental Health (CIBERSAM) of the Instituto de Salud Carlos III, and by Portuguese National funds through FITEC-Programa Interface, with reference CIT “INOV-INESC Inovação-Financiamento Base”.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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MDPI and ACS Style

Pereira, A.; Costa, N.; Fernández-Caballero, A. Special Issue on Body Area Networks. Appl. Sci. 2020, 10, 3540. https://doi.org/10.3390/app10103540

AMA Style

Pereira A, Costa N, Fernández-Caballero A. Special Issue on Body Area Networks. Applied Sciences. 2020; 10(10):3540. https://doi.org/10.3390/app10103540

Chicago/Turabian Style

Pereira, António, Nuno Costa, and Antonio Fernández-Caballero. 2020. "Special Issue on Body Area Networks" Applied Sciences 10, no. 10: 3540. https://doi.org/10.3390/app10103540

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