Research trends in wireless body area networks: From On-Body to Body-to-Body cooperation

Body Area Network (BAN) researches include a wide range of multidisciplinary topics like antennas and propagation close to the body, Medium Access Control (MAC) and networking protocols, security and localization. Short-term solutions for BANs so far were based on already existing communication standards, but they only partially meet the specific needs. More specifically they offer independent or closed solutions and can hardly communicate with the outside world (e.g. only via the preexisting cellular networks or WiFi infrastructures). In this paper, we discuss a possible extension of BANs from On-Body to Body-to-Body cooperative networks at different levels: propagation, protocols and localization applications.