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University of Tehran
School of Electrical and Computer
Engineering

Wireless Body Area Network

Presented By :
Soroush Gorji Makhsous 810187057
Class Presentation for Custom Implementation of DSP Systems Course
Spring 2010
This presentation is mostly based on ISSCC2010 conference paper:
A 110 uW 10Mb/s eTextiles Transceiver for Body Area Networks with
Remote Battery Power
Patrick P. Mercier, Anantha P. Chandrakasan ,Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Outline

Introduction
Wireless Body Area Network
Sensor Devices
WBAN Application Areas
Body Sensor Network
Technical Requirements
Electronics Textiles
Conclusion

Introduction
An aging population and sedentary lifestyle are fueling the prevalence of
chronic diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, hypertension, and
diabetes. According to the WHO, cardiovascular disease causes 30 percent
of all deaths in the world. Diabetes currently affects 180 million people
worldwide and is expected to affect around 360 million by 2030. More than
2.3 billion people will be overweight by 2015. A rapid rise in debilitating
neuro-degenerative diseases such as Parkinsons and Alzheimers is
threatening millions more.
The advent of miniaturized sensors and actuators for monitoring,
diagnostic, and therapeutic functions, and advances in wireless technology
have opened up new frontiers in the race to conquer healthcare challenges.
Ultra-low-power wireless connectivity among devices placed in, on, and
around the human body is seen as a key technology enabling unprecedented
portability for monitoring physiological signs in the hospital, at home, and
on the move.

Introduction
Body area networking (BAN) technology has the potential to revolutionize
healthcare delivery in ambulances, emergency rooms, operation theaters,
postoperative recovery rooms, clinics, and homes. The benefits of
unobtrusive, and continuous monitoring/treatment include long-term trend
analysis, detection of transient abnormalities, prompt alerting of a caregiver
to intervene in case of an emergency, regulation of treatment regimes,
reduction of errors, reduction of hospital stays, extending independent
living for seniors, and improved patient comfort. BAN offers a paradigm
shift from managing illness to proactively managing wellness by focusing on
prevention and early detection/treatment of diseases.

Wireless Body Area Network

A wireless body area network (WBAN) connects independent nodes (e.g.,
sensors and actuators) that are situated in the clothes, on the body or under
the skin of a person. The network typically extends over the whole human
body and the nodes are connected through a wireless communication
channel.
According to the implementation, these nodes are placed in a star or multi
hop topology . A WBAN offers many promising, new applications in
home/health care, medicine, sports, multimedia, and many other areas, all
of which make advantage of the unconstrained freedom of movement a
WBAN offers.A Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) consists of several
small devices close to, attached to or implanted into the human body. These
devices communicate by means of a wireless network. Interaction with the
user or other persons is generally handled by a central device, e.g. a PDA

Wireless Body Area Network

The WBAN system is divided into three levels:
1.

The lowest level consists a set of intelligent sensors or nodes.

These are the reduced function devise. These can only
communicate with there parent device and cannot act as parent.
2. The second level is the personal server (Internet enabled PDA,
cell-phone, or home computer). These are full function devices.
And they can communicate with there children as well as with
the external network.
3. The third level encompasses a network of remote server which
is the remote application to which data or information is
transferred.

Wireless Body Area Network

Sensor level

Personal Server Level Medical Service Level

E. Jovanov, et al., A wireless body area network of intelligent motion sensors for computer
assisted physical rehabilitation, Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation, 2005, 2:6

Sensor Devices
Sensors fall into three categories:
1.

Physiological sensors : measure ambulatory blood pressure,

continuous glucose monitoring, core body temperature, blood
oxygen, and signals related to respiratory inductive
plethysmography, electrocardiography (ECG),
electroencephalography (EEG), and electromyography (EMG).
2. Biokinetic sensors : measure acceleration and angular rate of
rotation derived from human movement.
3. Ambient sensors : measure environmental phenomena, such as
humidity, light, sound pressure level, and temperature.
[4]

Sensor Devices

[4]

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WBAN Application Areas

Body senor network

Fitness monitoring
Wearable audio
Mobile device centric
Gaming & Entertainment
Consumer Electronics Applications : media
players, and headsets

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WBAN Application Areas

[2]

Slide
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Body Sensor Network

Medical application

Wearable Monitoring Systems

Pulse Oximeter
Electrocardiograph (EKG)
Electroencephalography (EEG)
Electromyography (EMG)

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Body Sensor Network

[4]

Slide
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Technical Requirements

Architecture
Density
Data rate
Latency
Mobility

Slide
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Technical Requirements
There is no specific standard for BANs
Current standards come close for specific use cases,
not broad enough
Issues: power consumption, discovery, QoS
Support for very low power devices, sensors

Target less than 10% power consumption for

communications compared to total device
Have single standard with broad range of
supported data rate - scalability
Technical requirements of selected BAN applications [2]

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Technical Requirements

Data rates and power requirements for WBAN according to [6].

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Technical Requirements

Characteristics of candidate technologies for WBAN [4]

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Technical Requirements

Merits and demerits of candidate technologies for BAN [4]

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Electronics Textiles (eTextiles)

[1]

Implemented eTextiles system [1]

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Electronics Textiles (eTextiles)

An emerging technique for conveying information around the human
body uses electronics textiles (eTextiles) as a communication
medium.
The medium consists of two electrically separate grids of conductive
yarn. Sensor nodes physically connect to the shared medium using
metallic button-snaps, and communicate via an eTextiles transceiver
chip.
Using a pair of physical low-impedance connections has the distinct
advantage over wireless and/or BCC systems to be able to:
1) signal differentially, permitting energy-efficient amplitude-modulation
schemes that tolerate coupled interference, and
2) power sensor nodes remotely from a local basestation (BS) at extremely
high efficiency, minimizing the energy storage requirements on each
node.
[1]

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eTextiles transceiver block diagram

[2]

eTextiles transceiver block diagram used for sensor nodes. The BS uses the
same chip, but replaces the super capacitor with a battery [1].

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Die Photograph & Chip Summary [1]

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Conclusion
WBAN opens up a whole new field of sensor networking and
intelligent technology. It is a very practical way to track user
activities for different purposes. It has a wide range of
implementations in Medical rehabilitation, digital IDs, military and
ultimately to personal entertainment systems. There are some
design and social issues which are currently posing some limitation
on commercial level implementation of WBAN.

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References
1.

ISSCC 2010 / DIRECTIONS IN HEALTH, ENERGY & RF / A 110 W 10Mb/s

eTextiles Transceiver for Body Area Networks with Remote Battery Power, Patrick
P. Mercier, Anantha P. Chandrakasan ,Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Cambridge, MA

2.

Enabling Technologies for Wireless Body Area Networks: A Survey and

Outlook,Huasong Cao and Victor Leung, University of British Columbia Cupid
Chow and Henry Chan, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

3.

A 1.12 pJ/b Inductive Transceiver With a Fault-Tolerant Network Switch for MultiLayer Wearable Body Area Network Applications, Jerald Yoo, Student Member,
IEEE, Seulki Lee, Student Member, IEEE, and Hoi-Jun Yoo, Fellow, IEEE
JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS, VOL. 44, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2009

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References
4.

Body Area Sensor Networks: Challenges and Opportunities ,Mark A. Hanson,

Harry C. Powell Jr., Adam T. Barth, Kyle Ringgenberg, Benton H. Calhoun, James
H. Aylor, and John Lach, University of Virginia , IEEE Computer Society 2009

5.

Data Security And Privacy In Wireless Body Area Networks, Ming Li And Wenjing
Lou, Worcester Polytechnic Institute Kui Ren, Illinois Institute Of Technology,
IEEE Wireless Communications February 2010

6.

S. Drude, Requirements and application scenarios for body area networks,in

Proc. Mobile Wireless Commun. Summit, 2007, 16th IST, Jul.15, pp. 15.

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Thank for your attention