Technologies and Challenges for Cognitive Radio Enabled Medical Wireless Body Area Networks

We present a review of spectrum sharing wireless body area networks. We investigate how cognitive radio (CR) and dynamic spectrum access are used for body area networks to save spectral resources. Specifically, we study the features associated with the usage of the three major CR paradigms of underlay, interweave, and overlay in these networks. We further put forward some use cases in medical applications. In this regard, we provide an overview of the existing schemes on interference mitigation for coexistence of different devices involving wireless body area networks. Further, we proceed with existing energy efficient medium access control protocols for CR-enabled body area networks. In addition, we outline the challenges and obstacles of implementing spectrum sharing concepts for body sensor networks.