Patient data dissemination in wireless body area network: a qualitative analysis

Abstract

With the availability of various sensors for vital signs monitoring of a human body, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have envisioned several applications in the health-care domain. Different wearable and implanted sensor nodes report the vital signs information to a remote medical facility via the local body coordinator. Together the set of sensor nodes and body coordinator form a network known as Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN). In addition to the common routing constraints of WSNs, WBAN poses unique challenges constrained by heterogeneous nature of data, postural movements, and temperature-rise issues. Numerous contributions have been made to address the aforementioned issues of WBAN and are classified as temperature-Aware routing protocols, cluster-based routing protocols, QoS-Aware routing protocols and postural movement based routing protocols. This paper qualitatively analyzes the performance of the variously proposed protocols in terms of energy efficiency, provision of QoS, mobility, end-To-end delay, and temperature-rise. A relative performance of all the protocols is also given in order to develop a general understanding of the overall efficacy in-line with the unique constraints of WBANs.