Research Challenges in BAN Due to the Mixed WSN Features: Some Perspectives and Future Directions

Wireless sensor network (WSN)-based solutions are highly promising and obvious choice for a wide range of real world monitoring applications. Present studies in WSNs aimed to improve the network characteristics and technologies, and also encouraged timely transformation in WSN. Body area network (BAN) is one such marked change in the form of WSN, which is used in physiological and medical monitoring. Application requirements also induce several challenges in the network, such as node movement, change in propagation medium, and heterogeneous sensing abilities. The presence of these features makes the underlying WSN environment more exigent. We have termed such an environment as mixed WSN (MWSN) in this paper. The main objective of this paper is to highlight the research challenges in BAN due to the presence of MWSN features with a discussion on future direction.