Development of visualization and performance evaluation testbed for Wireless Body Area Network

Due to the advances made in sensing, computing and networking, continuous monitoring and just-in-time prevention through Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) in healthcare becomes a promising approach. In order to support healthcare needs, WBAN must achieve reliable data delivery and efficient resource management. To develop such healthcare solutions, understanding of system operations and performance evaluation in realistic settings beforehand will be an essential step. The main requirement is to visualize detailed node states and protocol operations considering RF channel characteristics around the body and their correlation on dynamic body postures. In this paper, we present the design and development of a testbed for WBAN that supports visualization of network operations as well as evaluation of system performance. We also identify challenges and requirements for developing WBAN healthcare applications. Then, we explain the system architecture and implementation as well as the experiment design and scenarios related to the proposed testbed.