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Recent trends in Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) research and cognition
based adaptive WBAN architecture for healthcare

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DOI: 10.1007/s12553-014-0083-x

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Health Technol. (2014) 4:239–244
DOI 10.1007/s12553-014-0083-x
REVIEW PAPER
Recent trends in Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) research
and cognition based adaptive WBAN architecture for healthcare
Dheeraj Rathee & Savita Rangi & S. K. Chakarvarti &
V. R. Singh
Received: 31 January 2014 / Accepted: 7 May 2014 / Published online: 24 May 2014
# IUPESM and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014
Abstract In healthcare domain, Wireless Body Area
Network (WBAN) has transpired as a prominent technology
which is capable of providing better methods of real time
patient health monitoring at hospitals, asylums and even at
their homes. In recent times, WBAN has gained great interest
and proved one of the most explored technologies by health
care facilities because of its vital role and wide range of
application in clinical sciences. WBAN involve communica-
tion between very small sensor nodes with frequently chang-
ing environment, hence lots of issues still need to be ad-
dressed. Some of the major issues are Physical layer issues,
interoperability & mobility issue, reliability, resource manage-
ment, usability, Energy consumption and QoS issues. This
research paper includes a comprehensive survey of recent
trends in WBAN research, provides prospective solutions to
some major issues using cognitive approach and a proposed
concept of Cognitive Radio based WBAN architecture. Thus a
conventional WBAN architecture can be improvised to an
adaptive, more reliable and efficient WBAN system using
Cognitive based approach.
D. Rathee (*) : S. Rangi : S. K. Chakarvarti
Department of ECE, FET, Manav Rachna International University,
Faridabad, India
e-mail: dheeraj.fet@mriu.edu.in
S. Rangi
e-mail: savita.fet@mriu.edu.in
S. K. Chakarvarti
e-mail: skchakravarti.fet@mriu.edu.in
V. R. Singh
National Physics Laboratory, New Delhi 110012, India
e-mail: vrsingh@ieee.org
V. R. Singh
PDM Educational Institutions, Bahadurgarh, India
Keywords Wireless Body Area Networks . Cognitive
Radio . MAC layer . Healthcare . WBAN applications
1 Introduction
WBAN is a wireless networking technology, based on Radio
Frequency (RF) that interconnects a number of small nodes
with sensor or actuator capabilities. These nodes operate in
close vicinity to, on or few cm inside a human body, to support
various medical area and non-medical area applications [1].
WBAN technology is highly appreciated in the field of med-
ical science and human healthcare [2–5]. Also significant
contribution is delivered in the field of Biomedical and other
scientific areas [6]. Moreover, its applications are widespread
in non-medical areas like consumer electronics and personal
entertainment.
In late 1990s, researchers & academicians showed interest
in cognitive radio (CR) technology. The general idea of CR
was given in 1999 by Mitola [7]. Cognitive radio enhances the
software radio with radio-domain protocols, and extends the
flexibility of user defined services using a radio knowledge
based programming language. Thus an ideal platform is pro-
vided by Software radio for the practical realization of cogni-
tive radio. Cognitive Radio (CR) is a platform for opportunistic
and cooperative control to primary (licensed) section of the
electromagnetic spectrum by secondary (unlicensed) users.
CRT includes sensing its electromagnetic operational environ-
ment by sensors. CR enabled BAN will plan and take decisions
on its outcomes considering system’s priorities, end goals and
other constraints and further focus on improving the efficiency
of wireless resource usage. With these self-awareness and
environment awareness capabilities the novel WBAN system
can apply best strategies to meet its requirements.
Further details about CRT can be referred from [8–19].
During the last 12 years, the technology grows at rapid speed.
240
The utility of CR has been recognised by ETSI and IEEE.
IEEE is playing an important role in developing CR technol-
ogy by forming IEEE standard 1900 with its workgroups 1–6
[20].
2 Current trends in WBAN research
A lot of research work is undergoing on WBANs. The main
issues concentrated upon are scale of network, result accuracy,
node density, power supply, mobility, data rate, energy con-
sumption, QoS, and Real time communication. WBAN nodes
use miniaturized batteries due to their small size. Hence the
network must work and perform in a power efficient manner
so that the life duration of power sources can be maximized.
Most of the work in this particular domain has been on
development of better MAC protocols for energy efficient
processing.
Presently, there are two different approaches of MAC
protocol designing for sensor networks. First one is
Contention- based MAC protocol design. Example of this
type of MAC protocol is Carrier Sense Multiple Access –
Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA). This design has their
nodes priorities for channel access before transmitting data.
The benefits of CSMA/CA based protocols include almost no
time synchronization constraints, easy adaptability to network
variations and scalability. The other approach is Schedule-
based MAC protocol. Example of this type of protocol is a
TDMA based, in which time slotted access to the channel is
provided. Hence different users get separate time slots for data
transmission. These slots can be of fixed or variable duration.
Time Slot Controller (TSC) is used for providing time slots.
The benefits of this approach are reduced idle listening,
overheading and collision. TDMA based approach is highly
used in energy efficient MAC protocol [21].
According to [22], IEEE 802.15.4 is not capable of provid-
ing energy efficient communication for WBAN applications.
There are many loop holes that must be filled for their use in
medical area. Hence another improved standard, i.e. IEEE
802.15 with task group 6 (BAN) has been formulated [23].
The purpose of this standard is to provide new MAC and
physical layers for WBAN. The Physical layer (frequency
bands) is categorized as Narrowband, Ultra Wide Band
(UWB) and Human Body Communication (HBC). The
MAC layer includes following three modes [24]:
1. Beacon mode with a beacon period superframe
boundaries
2. Non Beacon mode with superframe boundaries
3. Non Beacon mode without superframe boundaries
In [24], it is also shown that the efficiency for CSMA\CA
based MAC layer can be improved by increasing payload size
Health Technol. (2014) 4:239–244
and thereby bandwidth. Another work undertook the approach
of Clear-Channel Assessment and Collision Avoidance
(CCA\CA) with TDMA in generation of energy-efficient
MAC layer [25].
Marinkovic et al. [26] presents a low duty cycle, TDMA
based energy efficient MAC protocol. The novel MAC pro-
tocol includes collision free data transfer (TDMA) and energy
efficiency because of sleep time application for sensors, with-
out the need of channel listening. Hence, communication is
done for small overhead and minimum time spent on idle
listening. The protocol is implemented on analog device de-
velopment platforms (ADF70XXMBZ2) with RF
transceivers.
A novel approach of heartbeat powered the MAC protocol
is given by [27]. This protocol is TDMA based and used for
body sensor networks (BSNs). The work includes usage of
heart beat rhythm to perform time synchronization and hence
provides an energy-efficient MAC layer by avoiding power
consumption associated with time synchronization beacon
transmission.
Fang, et al. proposed a new MAC protocol, BODYMAC,
for WBANs [28]. This protocol uses efficient and flexible
bandwidth allocation schemes and introduction of sleep
modes to reach the desired requirements of dynamic applica-
tion in WBANs. The bandwidth allocation flexibility of
BodyMAC is improved by dynamic bandwidth allocation
mechanism like burst bandwidth. Results showed that the
average delay is decreased by almost 30 % and improved
bandwidth utilization efficiency was achieved. But the effect
of deep channel fading and central packet introduction is not
considered during the simulation process.
In [29], Timmons, et al. introduced another novel Mac
protocol, MedMAC. The protocol features contention free
TDMA channel access scheme, a novel low-overhead
TDMA synchronization mechanism, energy-efficient, and dy-
namically adjusting time slots, optimal contention period and
use of sleep modes. Adaptive Guard Band Algorithm
(AGBA) is used to maintain synchronization of devices dur-
ing sleeping period, using beacons. The protocol is useful in
only low & medium data rate medical application of WBAN.
A cross-layer fuzzy-rule scheduling algorithm was intro-
duced to replace conventional first-come-first-serve transmit-
ting discipline for MAC layer processing by Otal et al. [30].
Hence a new Distributed Queuing Body Area Network
(DQBAN) MAC protocol was introduced to get high reliabil-
ity and application based QoS requirements (reliability &
message latency) for packet transmission. Energy consump-
tion was reduced but not significantly.
Latre, et al. also proposed a cross-layer protocol, CICADA,
for WBAN application [31]. CICIADA or Cascading
Information by Controlling Access with Distributed slot
Assessment was based on tree structures. A control cycle
and a data sub-cycle were used collectively to achieve low
Health Technol. (2014) 4:239–244
delays and better energy efficiency while preserving network
flexibility.
Al Ameen et al. [32] proposed a novel wake-up mechanism
for implanted devices to communicate in Wireless BANs. The
proposed MAC protocol was energy-efficient and minimizes
time delays, but functionality is restricted to implant devices
only. In [33], Liu et al. introduced a novel dynamic model for
small scale direct methanol fuel cells. In this fuel cells are
directly coupled with PSO algorithm to increase the battery
life.
A hybrid approach to context –aware MAC protocol was
introduced using TDMA-based and contention-based algo-
rithms by Choi et al. [34]. Channel fading due to adaptively
modified frame structure was also managed using a new
control mechanism while bursty, periodic and emergency data
traffic was controlled by polling-based and scheduled-based
techniques. Simulation results were better than conventional
system but reliability and efficiency was quite low.
Huq et al. [35] proposed an energy efficient MAC layer
protocol for master node and attached nodes in WBAN sys-
tem. Performance of the system was better with high number
of nodes as the size the conventional MAC superframe struc-
ture was reduced by removing redundant periods. Thus the
average power consumption per bits was drastically reduced
but reliability was still an issue. In [36], a highly reliable
Medical emergency body (MEB) MAC protocol was pro-
posed by dynamical insertion of listening windows in conten-
tion free periods. The results showed better and reliable sys-
tem but high power consumption and susceptibility to outer
interferences were still present.
In [37], increased sleep time and low duty cycle per beacon
was introduced in form of a statistical MAC layer protocol for
heterogeneous traffic networks. The system was experimented
in HBC platform and resulted in an energy efficient and
compact protocol but the system reliability was low because
of non-transmission of lost messages during inactive periods.
A survey on various context-aware MAC layer and applica-
tion layer protocols was given in [38]. It was concluded that
limited solutions are available particularly in MAC layer area
for context-aware data transmission.
Most of the work that has been discussed above speaks
about providing novel energy-efficient MAC layer protocols
or better power supplying devices. Although none of them
have succeeded in making significant energy efficient systems
with better throughput.
3 Proposed architecture for adaptive WBAN using a CRT
The proposed architecture is to merge two most significant
technologies of current time i.e. Conventional WBAN and
Cognitive Radio Technology (CRT), to get a highly efficient
and reliable Wireless Body Area Network that revolutionizes
241
the future of WBAN. The novel cognitive approach based
wireless BAN, can lead to a considerable improvement in
resource efficiency (spectrum management), networking effi-
ciency and energy efficiency.
Research Design includes proposed architecture of WBAN
with Cognitive abilities. The architecture includes the follow-
ing three levels of communication (Fig. 1).
3.1 Level 0
This level includes Intra-WBAN communication. This in-
cludes the following components:
3.1.1 Core and actuator nodes (sensors/actuators)
A number of sensor nodes operating on the body, inside the
body or in close proximity (less than 2 cms) to collect data on
physical signals (bio-signals) from human body
(detection\acquisition), process them (if necessary) according
to requirements and finally transmit them to a centralized on
body network controller. It consists of a micro sized processor
with memory, a power unit & a transceiver.
Intelligent Core and access nodes (sensors/actuators) can be
designed with the help of cognitive approach. Sensor nodes are
designed using appropriate methods and ability to access self
and environment information. Thus intelligent nodes will per-
form their operation in highly reliable and energy efficient
manner, using cognitive approach. The intelligent sensors are
capable of adjusting not only to communication limitations but
also to the information requirements. Cognitive features that
can be incorporated in sensors are goal evaluation, real time and
energy efficient monitoring, intelligent processing and wireless
cognitive connectivity with Network Coordination Unit.
3.1.2 CRT based Network Coordination Unit (NCU)
This device is placed on body of a patient or the person under
consideration itself. The main purpose of NCU is to commu-
nicate core and access nodes (sensors/actuators), process the
compiled data and transmit to Central Controlling Unit (CCU)
at Level 1. CRT based NCU is capable of performing a
number of cognitive functions like to improve Data fusion,
spectrum sensing (b/w nodes & NCU), configurable network-
ing, node parameters (mobility, battery life, working, connec-
tivity) sensing, energy efficient and reliable data routing and
wireless cognitive connectivity with CCU. The basic compo-
nents of CRT based NCU would be a small size processing
unit, memory unit and a transceiver.
3.2 Level 1
This communication level consists of Inter-WBAN network-
ing. Here a number of NCUs are connected wirelessly to a
242
Fig. 1 Basic architecture of CR enabled WBAN
CRT enabled the Central Controlling Unit (CCU) and main
function of CCU is to communicate with a number of NCUs
within a particular area (hospital, building, asylum etc.) using
CRT approach. This unit will be static and hence power supply
and connectivity issues are not so important, but the rest of the
issues are quite vital. Cognitive functions that can be incorpo-
rated in CRT enabled CCU are spectrum sensing (b/w NCUs
& CCU), Energy efficient and highly reliable routing proto-
cols, Efficient MAC protocol, NCU parameters (mobility &
location, battery life, working, calibration and connectivity)
maintenance, QoS awareness and end-to-end goal mainte-
nance. The basic components of the CRT based CCU will
be a heavy processor, large memory unit and a transceiver.
3.3 Level 2
This communication level will be beyond WBAN network-
ing. CRT based CCU will be connected wirelessly to any of
the following:
& Doctor or Medical Attendant or Supporting staff
Health Technol. (2014) 4:239–244
& Emergency Services e.g. ambulance or risk management
unit
& Hospital or Healthcare Unit
3.4 Cognitive functions incorporated
The cognitive functions that would be applied to different
networking layers in CRT enabled WBAN are as follows:
3.4.1 Spectrum sensing
The major cognitive approach to the WBAN is Spectrum
Sensing. WBAN can communicate through licensed bands
(MICS, WMTS) or through the unlicensed band like ISM
(2.4 GHz) band. Both communication systems require infor-
mation about the primary users (licensed) and white spaces
(empty spectrum holes) in the spectrum. It has been seen that
much of the licensed spectrum remains unused most of the
time and unlicensed band is overcrowded as most of the
medical devices communicate in this band only. Thus efficient
Health Technol. (2014) 4:239–244 243

exploitation of the spectrum is quite vital. CR enabled WBAN

can use cooperative or opportunistic spectrum sensing tech-
niques for spectrum aware processing.

3.4.2 Resource allocation

Resource Allocation in CR enabled WBAN is very crucial as

it controls the interference caused to other communication
systems as well as to its own network. It includes Power and
frequency allocation schemes which can be done in proper
manner to minimize the interaction of WBAN with other
networks like Bluetooth, LANs etc. and to minimize interfer-
ence between different BNUs (inter-WBAN). QoS and end- Fig. 2 Layered architecture of CR enabled WBAN
to-end goals consideration is also taken into account during
resource allocation in CR enabled WBAN. This function in
the CR - WBAN will be able to utilize dynamic spectrum 3.4.5 QoS awareness and end-to-end goal achievement
resources efficiently to maximize network throughput perfor-
mance. It will also ensure minimization of harmful interfer- QoS and end-to-end goals are crucial parameters for any
ence from Secondary Users to Primary Users. Moreover, CRT Efficient & reliable system. QoS awareness is a CRT function
is capable enough to convert the resource gains into perfor- that is very much related to multiple layers of the network
mance gains efficiently. while end-to-end goals are directly related to the application
layer. Desired goals would be achieved by intelligent process-
ing and smart communication of data within different layers of
3.4.3 CRT enabled MAC protocol network while considering QoS awareness. Also reliability of
the system would improve by constant monitoring of end-to
Energy efficiency is another important requirement in WBAN end goals, comparing them with desired QoS parameters and
(as explained earlier) and an efficient MAC protocol is the reconfiguration of network.
most suitable level in the protocol stack to address the energy Another view of CRT based WBAN architecture is shown
consumption issue. CR enabled MAC protocol will use the below in Fig. 2 which includes layer wise WBAN working
information about spectrum, resource allocation and QoS using cognitive approach.
issues to provide an optimum Spectrum access scheme. The
novel MAC layer will support distinct applications and trans-
mission of heterogeneous data with high level QoS. The
fundamental task of CR-enabled MAC protocol is to avoid
4 Conclusion
collisions and repeated data transmissions while maintaining
maximum throughput, communication reliability, minimum
This paper included current research trends in WBAN with
latency and maximum energy efficiency. In CR enabled
deep review of MAC layer research. We also proposed the
WBAN MAC layer is tightly coupled with high level layers
concept of CRT based Adaptive WBAN architecture for effi-
and PHY layer.
cient and reliable results. CRT based functions for different
layers of the network were also modelled and discussed in
3.4.4 Spectrum-aware routing protocol detail. Future work may involve practical testing of the pro-
posed concept.
Spectrum-aware routing protocol enhances the cognitive func-
tions of link and network layers. This protocol became crucial Conflict of interest The authors declare that they have no conflict of
when the physical layer nature is dynamical. In WBAN, high interest.
overhead problem is quite natural hence intelligent routing
protocol is must. Spectrum awareness feature gives conven-
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