A prototype BAN for medical and healthcare monitoring based on high band UWB

Body area network (BAN) has been attracting more and more attentions, especially since BAN standardization was formally started by IEEE 802 in 2008. By enabling reliable wireless connection within body area, BAN is expected to provide an efficient way to lower disease occurrence rate and reduce medical expenditure when combining with various vital signal sensors deployed on human body. In this paper, a prototype BAN system is presented. As a new effort, high band of ultra-wideband (UWB) is used to build the prototype BAN. Various sensors are adopted to monitor different body related information. Both physical layer (PHY) and medium access control (MAC) layer of the prototype BAN are illustrated. Moreover, RF specifications as well as measurement results are presented. The prototype BAN performs well with the designed functions.