• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• 제6권9호
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• pp.2302-2322
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• 2012

Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) are introduced as an enabling technology in tele-health for patient monitoring. Designing an efficient Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol is the main challenge in WBANs because of their various applications and strict requirements such as low level of energy consumption, low transmission delay, the wide range of data rates and prioritizing emergency data. In this paper, we propose a new MAC protocol to provide different requirements of WBANs targeted for medical applications. The proposed MAC provides an efficient emergency response mechanism by considering the correlation between medical signals. It also reduces the power consumption of nodes by minimizing contention access, reducing the probability of the collision and using an efficient synchronization algorithm. In addition, the proposed MAC protocol increases the data rate of the nodes by allocating the resources according to the condition of the network. Analytical and simulation results show that the proposed MAC protocol outperforms IEEE 802.15.4 MAC protocol in terms of power consumption level as well as the average response delay. Also, the comparison results of the proposed MAC with IEEE 802.15.6 MAC protocol show a tradeoff between average response delay and medical data rate.

• ETRI Journal
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• 제32권1호
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• pp.11-21
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• 2010

A novel ultra-wideband (UWB) transceiver structure is presented to be used in wireless body area networks (WBANs). In the proposed structure, a data channel and a control channel are combined into a single transmission signal. In the signal, a modulation method mixing pulse position modulation and pulse amplitude modulation is proposed. A mathematical framework calculating the power spectrum density of the proposed pulse-based signal evaluates its coexistence with conventional radio systems. The transceiver structure is discussed, and the receiving performance is investigated in the additive white Gaussian noise channel. It is demonstrated that the proposed scheme is easier to match to the UWB emission mask than conventional UWB systems. The proposed scheme achieves the data rate requirement of WBAN; the logical control channel achieves better receiving performance than the logical data channel, which is useful for controlling and maintaining networks. The proposed scheme is also easy to implement.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• 제7권5호
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• pp.1036-1057
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• 2013

Wireless body area network (WBAN) is a promising candidate for future health monitoring system. Nevertheless, the path to mature solutions is still facing a lot of challenges that need to be overcome. Energy efficient scheduling is one of these challenges given the scarcity of available energy of biosensors and the lack of portability. Therefore, researchers from academia, industry and health sectors are working together to realize practical solutions for these challenges. The main difficulty in WBAN is the uncertainty in the state of the monitored system. Intelligent learning approaches such as a Markov Decision Process (MDP) were proposed to tackle this issue. A Markov Decision Process (MDP) is a form of Markov Chain in which the transition matrix depends on the action taken by the decision maker (agent) at each time step. The agent receives a reward, which depends on the action and the state. The goal is to find a function, called a policy, which specifies which action to take in each state, so as to maximize some utility functions (e.g., the mean or expected discounted sum) of the sequence of rewards. A partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDP) is a generalization of Markov decision processes that allows for the incomplete information regarding the state of the system. In this case, the state is not visible to the agent. This has many applications in operations research and artificial intelligence. Due to incomplete knowledge of the system, this uncertainty makes formulating and solving POMDP models mathematically complex and computationally expensive. Limited progress has been made in terms of applying POMPD to real applications. In this paper, we surveyed the existing methods and algorithms for solving POMDP in the general domain and in particular in Wireless body area network (WBAN). In addition, the papers discussed recent real implementation of POMDP on practical problems of WBAN. We believe that this work will provide valuable insights for the newcomers who would like to pursue related research in the domain of WBAN.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• 제7권5호
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• pp.1108-1130
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• 2013

Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) are becoming increasingly important to solve the issue of health care. IEEE 802.15.6 is a wireless communication standard for WBANs, aiming to provide a real-time and continuous monitoring. In this paper, we present our development of a modified Markov Chain model and a backoff model, in which most features such as user priorities, contention windows, modulation and coding schemes (MCSs), and frozen states are taken into account. Then we calculate the normalized throughput and average access delay of IEEE 802.15.6 networks under saturation and ideal channel conditions. We make an evaluation of network performances by comparing with IEEE 802.15.4 and the results validate that IEEE 802.15.6 networks can provide high quality of service (QoS) for nodes with high priorities.

• ETRI Journal
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• 제41권4호
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• pp.452-464
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• 2019

The use of wireless body area networks (WBANs) in healthcare applications has made it convenient to monitor both health personnel and patient status continuously in real time through wearable wireless sensor nodes. However, the heterogeneous and complex network structure of WBANs has some disadvantages in terms of control and management. The software-defined network (SDN) approach is a promising technology that defines a new design and management approach for network communications. In order to create more flexible and dynamic network structures in WBANs, this study uses the SDN approach. For this, a WBAN architecture based on the SDN approach with a new energy-aware routing algorithm for healthcare architecture is proposed. To develop a more flexible architecture, a controller that manages all HUBs is designed. The proposed architecture is modeled using the Riverbed Modeler software for performance analysis. The simulation results show that the SDN-based structure meets the service quality requirements and shows superior performance in terms of energy consumption, throughput, successful transmission rate, and delay parameters according to the traditional routing approach.

• 한국정보처리학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국정보처리학회 2009년도 춘계학술발표대회
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• pp.1359-1362
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• 2009

센서 네트워크의 저전력 단거리 무선통신의 특징을 의료분야에 적용한 의료용 네트워크(Medical Body Area Networks)는 사람의 인체를 진단하기 위한 소형 의료 디바이스들간의 연결성을 제공하기위해 최근 주목받고 있는 기술이다. 본 논문에서 제안하는 프로토콜은 MBAN에서 전력의 효율성 및 신뢰성에 초점을 맞추어 제안 하였다. IEEE 802.15.3의 MCTA를 MBAN에서 적용 가능한 SR-MCTA로 변형하여 전송의 신뢰성 및 전력 사용의 효율성을 고려한 프로토콜을 제안한다. 제안하는 프로토콜에서 SR-MCTA 슬롯은 단말 디바이스의 요청에 의해 MBAN 코디네이터가 할당하며, 할당하는 방법은 현재 슬롯에서 긴급 패킷이 발생할 때 임이의 충돌 패킷을 발생시켜 서 패킷을 획득하는 방법을 사용한다. 이를 위해 WBAN 네트워크내의 특정 노드를 클러스터의 헤드로 설정한다. 제안하는 프로토콜의 효율성 분석을 통하여 제안하는 방법이 전송의 지연 개선 및 에너지 효율적임을 보였다.

• ETRI Journal
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• 제41권5호
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• pp.648-657
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• 2019

A cluster topology was proposed with the assumption of zero noise to improve the performance of wireless body area networks (WBANs). However, in WBANs, the transmission power should be reduced as low as possible to avoid the effect of electromagnetic waves on the human body and to extend the lifetime of a battery. Therefore, in this work, we consider a bit error rate for a cluster-based WBAN and analyze the performance of the system while the transmission of sensors and cluster headers (CHs) is controlled. Moreover, a hierarchical topology is proposed for the cluster-based WBAN to further improve the throughput of the system; this proposed system is called as the hierarchical cluster WBAN. The hierarchical cluster WBAN is combined with a transmission control scheme, that is, complete control, spatial reuse superframe, to increase the throughput. The proposed system is analyzed and evaluated based on several factors of the system model, such as signal-to-noise ratio, number of clusters, and number of sensors. The calculation result indicates that the proposed hierarchical cluster WBAN outperforms the cluster-based WBAN in all analyzed scenarios.

• 인터넷정보학회논문지
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• 제21권2호
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• pp.19-26
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• 2020

This paper analyses the feasibility of using implantable antennas to detect and monitor tumors. We analyze this setting according to the wireless propagation loss and signal fading produced by human bodies and their environment in an indoor scenario. The study is based on the ITU-R propagation recommendations and prediction models for the planning of indoor radio communication systems and radio local area networks in the frequency range of 300 MHz to 100 GHz. We conduct primary estimations on 915 MHz and 2.4 GHz operating frequencies. The path loss presented in most short-range wireless implant devices does not take into account the human body as a channel itself, which causes additional losses to wireless designs. In this paper, we examine the propagation through the human body, including losses taken from bones, muscles, fat, and clothes, which results in a more accurate characterization and estimation of the channel. The results obtained from our simulation indicates a variation of the return loss of the spiral antenna when a tumor is located near the implant. This knowledge can be applied in medical detection, and monitoring of early tumors, by analyzing the electromagnetic field behavior of the implant. The tumor was modeled under CST Microwave Studio, using Wisconsin Diagnosis Breast Cancer Dataset. Features like the radius, texture, perimeter, area, and smoothness of the tumor are included along with their label data to determine whether the external shape has malignant or benign physiognomies. An explanation of the feasibility of the system deployment and technical recommendations to avoid interference is also described.

• Journal of Computing Science and Engineering
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• 제4권1호
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• pp.23-51
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• 2010

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) have proved to be useful in applications that involve monitoring of real-time data. There is a wide variety of monitoring applications that can employ Wireless Sensor Network. Characteristics of a WSN, such as topology and scale, depend upon the application, for which it is employed. Security requirements in WSN vary according to the application dependent network characteristics and the characteristics of an application itself. Key management is the most important aspect of security as some other security modules depend on it. We discuss application dependent variations in WSN, corresponding changes in the security requirements of WSN and the applicability of existing key management solutions in each scenario.

• Journal of electromagnetic engineering and science
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• 제15권2호
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• pp.97-103
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• 2015

This paper investigates the effect of absorption loss by a human body to the received signal strength with respect to on-body transmitting antenna positions in on-to-off wireless body area networks. This investigation is based on measurement results obtained from experiments performed on human bodies (male and female) using planar inverted-F antennas in an anechoic chamber. The total absorption loss by the human body is also presented through the SEMCAD-X simulations. Our investigation showed that the received signal strength becomes lower when the transmitting antenna is mounted at a specific position where more absorption loss is experienced. The statistical analyses of on-to-off body channel characteristics based on the measurement results are presented.