ABSTRACT
Thanks to the Moore’s law, the continuous decrease in size of electronic devices, while increasing capacities, made it inevitable for the development of tiny and portable devices that could communicate with each other around the human body. This substantial development has caused a growing interest of researchers, system designers, and application developers in a new type of network architecture generally known as the body sensor network (BSN) or wireless body area network (WBAN).* A BSN is thus a special type of network that integrates miniaturized, intelligent, low-power sensor nodes in, on, or around a human body and continuously monitors the body functions and surrounding environment [1]. Some sensor devices are wearable, and some can be implanted in the body. All of the sensor nodes are intelligent in the sense that they have the capability of capturing, processing, and forwarding data to a nearby base station for further diagnosis. The nodes communicate with each other through a wireless link. The sensors provide
5.4 Challenges and Open Research Issues .............................................................................135 5.5 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 136 References ................................................................................................................................137
continuous and real-time feedback to the user or healthcare professional. Moreover, the captured data can be recorded for longer periods of time, improving the quality of the measured data [2].
