Table 2 Comparisons of experimental settings and results between this work and WBAN systems from the literature

[24]

A WBAN system with motion sensors for physical rehabilitation was presented.

ZigBee, IEEE 802.15.4

• Experiment

• Sensor data including motion sensor, ECG, oxygen saturation, temperature, and humidity were gathered. They were sent to the medical servers.

- Sensor data from the WBAN as the real-time data were measured and collected.

- The system provided guidance and feedback to the user, and could generate warnings based on the user's state, level of activity, and environmental conditions.

- All recorded information could be transferred to medical servers via the Internet.

[25]

Performance evaluation of a WBAN for remote patient monitoring was presented.

ZigBee, IEEE 802.15.4

• Simulation

• The performance of a remote patient monitoring system was analyzed, where patient data recorded in the hospital database were transmitted through the WBAN.

- It was possible to monitor patients from remote locations using the WBAN over the Internet without reasonable delay.

- The transmission control protocol (TCP) used in a fixed network did not work very well in wireless networks. Thus, it would be sensible to use a multi-hop network to optimize the transmission time.

[26]

A wearable IEEE 802.15.4-based body sensor network for blood pressure monitoring was presented.

ZigBee, IEEE 802.15.4

• Experiment

• Arterial blood pressure estimated based on the pulse arrival time, which was measured using a single lead ECG patch on the chest and a photoplethysmogram (PPG) sensor on the finger was collected in the WBAN.

- Arterial blood pressure data could be measured and collected. The acquired data were stored and displayed on a personal digital assistant (PDA) or a wristwatch.

- The system could operate for up to 8 h.

[27]

Performance evaluation of the IEEE 802.15.4 for WBANs was presented.

IEEE 802.15.4

• Simulation

• Three different access schemes in the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC, including unslotted CSMA-CA, slotted CSMA-CA, and contention free period (CFP), were evaluated.

- The unslotted mode had better performance than the slotted one in terms of throughput and latency but with the cost of much power consumption.

- The guaranteed time slot (GTS) in CFP could not guarantee the successful transmission of the CFP frames without sufficient GTS allocation.

[28]

Design and implementation of a WBAN-based real-time Electroencephalogram (EEG) monitoring system was presented.

ZigBee, IEEE 802.15.4

• Experiment

• EEG signals were sent from sensor nodes and collected at the gateway, where a Zigbee/Internet Gateway (ZiGW) had been developed.

- EEG signals could be measured and collected, where the received signal strength indicator (RSSI) value at each different communication distance and the packet reception ratio under different RSSI levels were reported.

[29]

Implementation of WBANs for healthcare systems was presented.

ZigBee, IEEE 802.15.4

• Experiment

• Patient data including ECG, EEG, temperature, and pulse rate were measured in the WBAN.

• WBAN performance in terms of the end-to-end delay were measured and evaluated in the case of the patient walking in different distances from the gateway.

- The worst case delay was observed as 20 s when the distance between the active subject and the gateway was 15 m.

- Medical data could be monitored less than 300 ms when the active subject was within a distance of 1m and facing the gateway.

[30]

Performance evaluation of the IEEE 802.15.6 WBAN was introduced.

IEEE 802.15.6

• Simulation

• The IEEE 802.15.6 network performance in terms of packet loss rate, delay, and throughput was evaluated.

• A comparison with a WBAN based on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard was also carried out.

- Wearable sensor data collected from the human body were sent to a coordinator using the IEEE 802.15.6 standard.

- The IEEE 802.15.4 performed better than IEEE802.15.6 in terms of the packet loss rate (PLR), while for longer payloads, the IEEE 802.15.6 achieved lower PLRs.

- The delay obtained from the IEEE 802.15.4 was lower than the case of the IEEE 802.15.6. Thus, depending on the application requirements, the IEEE 802.15.4 could be more suitable in some cases than the 802.15.6.

[31]

Performance evaluation of WBANs for medical applications was presented.

The design of MAC protocols and power consumption profiles of WBANs were emphasized.

IEEE 802.15.6

• Simulation

• Blood pressure, respiratory rate, body temperature gathered from the human body were sent to a central coordinator unit, where communication performances were measured.

- WBAN packet error rate, packet loss, packet generation rate, and delay profile when varying payload sizes and the number of patients were measured and reported.

- The payload size could influence the performance of the WBAN.

[32]

Performance analysis of a WBAN monitoring system for professional cycling was presented.

IEEE 802.15.4

• Experiment

• The knee and ankle angles, which influence the performance as well as the risk of overuse injuries during cycling, were measured using WBANs.

- The WBAN could be used for real-time monitoring of lower limb kinematics during cycling.

- The wireless communication was robust enough to handle sudden drops in the RSSI values, and the energy consumption gave the sensor network a life-span of a couple of days.

[33]

Implementation of WBANs for IoT healthcare applications was presented.

BLE module with CC2541 chip (2.4 GHz)

• Experiment

• Multiple sensor nodes were deployed on different positions of the body to measure the subject's body temperature distribution, heartbeat, and detect falls. Note that accelerometers, temperature sensors, and pulse sensors were applied.

- The proposed system with solar energy harvesting demonstrated that long term continuous medical monitoring based on WBAN was possible provided that the subject stayed outside for a short period of time during the day.

- Performance of the solar energy harvester with a maximum power point tracking (MPPT) circuit and current consumption of the sensor node was also evaluated.

[34]

Delay analysis of emergency vital data packets in WBANs was presented.

ZigBee, IEEE 802.15.4

• Simulation

• The transmission delay of the standard ZigBee MAC, the modified MAC, and the priority-based MAC were evaluated when varying the number of ZigBee nodes and back-off periods.

- For a single ZigBee node, all MAC protocols provided the same results with a minor difference in delay.

- The modified MAC worked better than other methods when increasing the number of nodes.

[35]

Performance evaluation of the IEEE 802.15.4 in WBANs focusing on the broadcasting problem was studied.

IEEE 802.15.4

• Simulation

• Nine broadcasting algorithms in IEEE 802.15.4 WBANs were tested.

• Simulations were realized over a seven-node mobile network that included a dense area, as well as distant nodes in seven types of movements.

- Network performances of nine broadcasting algorithms in terms of network coverage, latency, traffic load, and energy consumption were reported.

[36]

Performance analyses of the IEEE 802.15.6 WBAN with heterogeneous traffic were presented.

IEEE 802.15.6

• Simulation

• The analytical analysis of the IEEE 802.15.6 standard with heterogeneous traffic in terms of priority was presented.

The effects of arrival rates and number of nodes on the PDR, the latency, and the queuing traffic load were reported.

[37]

A real-time wearable sport health monitoring system based on body sensor networks was developed.

nRF905 wireless transceiver, 433/868/915MHz

• Experiment

• The wearable sport health monitoring system, including three-axis acceleration, three-axis magnetometer, three-axis gyroscope, nRF905 wireless transceiver, and MSP430F2418 microcontroller, was implemented and tested.

The human body motion monitoring system enabled real-time monitoring of sports health.

[38]

Computational efficient wearable sensor networks have been proposed in health monitoring systems for sports athletic using IoT.

–

• Experiment

• The wearable device for the continuous real-time monitoring of heart rate, respiratory frequency, and movement cadence during physical activity has been analyzed.

- The sensor data could be uploaded to the IoT-connection system Ethernet module, and an authorized individual could access the data via the Internet to track the athletic health.

- The system was user-friendly, reliable, and economical to use.

[39]

An energy efficient architecture for IoT-enabled body area networks was presented.

Wi-Fi, IEEE 802.11

ZigBee, IEEE 802.15.4

• Experiment

• The system architecture had been tested with the different transceivers, including Wi-Fi and ZigBee, and with the different versions of embedded architecture.

- With the developed architecture, the energy consumption of the network was reduced by 40%.

[40]

Performance evaluation of the MAC layer protocol over WBANs was introduced.

ZigBee, IEEE 802.15.4

• Simulation

• ZigBee wireless networks with star, tree, and mesh topologies were evaluated under different scenarios.

- ZigBee wireless networks using the mesh topology provided the highest overall performance regardless of the number of nodes.

[41]

Improving network efficiency in WBANs using forwarder selection techniques was presented.

Wi-Fi, IEEE 802.11

Bluetooth

ZigBee, IEEE 802.15.4

• Simulation

• The solution for grouping sensor nodes and selecting forwarder nodes was evaluated in terms of energy consumption.

- Sensor node energy consumption was reduced.

[42]

WBAN monitoring with ZigBee, 5G, and 5G with MIMO for outdoor environments was presented.

ZigBee, IEEE 802.15.4

5G

MIMO

• Simulation

• Zigbee, 5G, and 5G with MIMO devices were tested in outdoor WBANs to evaluate energy consumption and transmission speed.

- The Zigbee devices could minimize the energy consumption and extend the nodes’ life cycles.

- The 5G device increased transmission speed to achieve fast delivery of data.

- MIMO added more stability to the consumption of received signal power.

Proposed work

Implementation and experimental evaluation of dynamic capabilities in WBANs were presented.

ZigBee, IEEE 802.15.4

• Experiment

• The effects of packet inter-arrival times, packet sizes, and the number of nodes deployed in the WBAN, including human movements, indoor and outdoor environments, and transmitter and receiver positions are taken into consideration and evaluation.

- Experimental results illustrated the significant factors which affected the WBAN reliability as measured by the PDR.

- The diverse environment testbed could affect WBAN’s performance for data transmission.

- The best network reliability needed to setup more than 15 ms in packet interval time to gain over 90% of PDR for every test scenario.

- Experimental results related to WBAN reliability obtained from various test cases were reported and summarized.