On-body UWB Communications for Health Monitoring

Background

As an emerging technology, BAN has caught significant attention in recent years (Astrin et al., 2009; Kohno, et al., 2008). A working group for medical body area network IEEE 802.15.6 was established under IEEE 802.15 in November 2007 and the standardization is now under the way (Li, 2009). The objective of 15.6 is to define new physical and media access control layers for wireless BAN (WBAN). Main focus of IEEE802.15.6 is laid on medical healthcare applications. (Kohno et al., 2008) introduces a progress of research and development of BAN standardization in IEEE 802.15.6 in a field of medical information communication technology. The progress of the IEEE 802.15.6 standardization covers a number of issues like frequency regulations, human safety, specific absorption rate (SAR), low power radio requirement, high quality of service and low latency as well as PHY layer discussion for wearable BAN and implant BAN. Moreover, a simple prototype of wearable BAN has been given to address the issues of modulation scheme and possible data rate.