Enabling Communication Technologies for Medical Wireless Body-Area Networks

The increasing percentage of aging population and chronic diseases on one hand, and the advances in the development of integrated short range wireless technologies on the other hand, have created a growing interest in the development of medical telemonitoring and telecare systems through the use of medical on-body sensor networks, also known as medical wireless body area networks (WBANs). This paper provides an overview of the main wireless technologies that can be used for WBANs in the medical domain and discusses the major requirements in such applications. While radio frequency technologies are well established solutions for interconnecting WBANs, the high risk of interference in such networks motivates the use of alternative or complementary technologies including optical wireless communications.