Wearable technologies and wireless body sensor networks for healthcare 9781785612176, 1785612174, 9781785612183

Table of contents :
Content: Chapter 1: IntroductionChapter 2: Scenarios and applications for wearable technologies and WBSNs with energy harvestingChapter 3: A reliable wearable system for BAN applications with a high number of sensors and high data rateChapter 4: Implementation study of wearable sensors for human activity recognition systemsChapter 5: Electromagnetic characterisation of textile materials for the design of wearable antennas and systemsChapter 6: Human-movement identification using the radio signal strength in WBANChapter 7: Cognitive radio and RF energy harvesting for medical WBANSChapter 8: Two innovative energy efficient IEEE 802.15.4 MAC sub-layer protocols with packet concatenation: employing RTS/CTS and multichannel scheduled channel pollingChapter 9: A precise low power and hardware-efficient time synchronization method for wearable systemsChapter 10: Wearable sensor networks for human gaitChapter 11: Integration of sensing devices and the cloud for innovative e-Health applicationsChapter 12: VitalResponder (R): wearable wireless platform for vitals and body-area environment monitoring of first response teamsChapter 13: Wearable sensors for foetal movement monitoring in low risk pregnanciesChapter 14: Radio frequency energy harvesting and storing in supercapacitors for wearable sensorsChapter 15: Conclusion

Citation preview

IET HEALTHCARE TECHNOLOGIES SERIES 11

Wearable Technologies and Wireless Body Sensor Networks for Healthcare

The IET International Book Series on Sensors IET Book Series on e-Health Technologies – Call for Authors Book Series Editor: Professor Joel P.C. Rodrigues, the National Institute of Telecommunications (Inatel), Brazil, and Instituto de Telecomunicações, Portugal. While the demographic shifts in populations display significant socio-economic challenges, they trigger opportunities for innovations in e-Health, m-Health, precision and personalized medicine, robotics, sensing, the Internet of Things, cloud computing, Big Data, Software Defined Networks and network function virtualization. Their integration is, however, associated with many technological, ethical, legal, social and security issues. This new Book Series aims to disseminate recent advances for e-Health Technologies to improve healthcare and people’s wellbeing. Topics considered include Intelligent e-Health systems, electronic health records, ICT-enabled personal health systems, mobile and cloud computing for eHealth, health monitoring, precision and personalized health, robotics for e-Health, security and privacy in e-Health, ambient assisted living, telemedicine, Big Data and IoT for e-Health, and more. Proposals for coherently integrated international multi-authored, edited or co-authored handbooks and research monographs will be considered for this Book Series. Each proposal will be reviewed by the Book Series Editor with additional external reviews from independent reviewers. Please email your book proposal for the IET Book Series on e-Health Technologies to: Professor Joel Rodrigues at [email protected] or [email protected], or alternatively contact [email protected].

Wearable Technologies and Wireless Body Sensor Networks for Healthcare Edited by Fernando José Velez and Fardin Derogarian Miyandoab

The Institution of Engineering and Technology

Published by The Institution of Engineering and Technology, London, United Kingdom The Institution of Engineering and Technology is registered as a Charity in England & Wales (no. 211014) and Scotland (no. SC038698). © The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2019 First published 2019 This publication is copyright under the Berne Convention and the Universal Copyright Convention. All rights reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, only with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publisher at the undermentioned address: The Institution of Engineering and Technology Michael Faraday House Six Hills Way, Stevenage Herts SG1 2AY, United Kingdom www.theiet.org While the authors and publisher believe that the information and guidance given in this work are correct, all parties must rely upon their own skill and judgement when making use of them. Neither the authors nor publisher assumes any liability to anyone for any loss or damage caused by any error or omission in the work, whether such an error or omission is the result of negligence or any other cause. Any and all such liability is disclaimed. The moral rights of the authors to be identified as authors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this product is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-78561-217-6 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-78561-218-3 (PDF)

Typeset in India by MPS Limited Printed in the UK by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon

Contents

Foreword Preface Acknowledgments List of reviewers Author biographies 1 Introduction Fernando J. Velez and Fardin Derogarian 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4

Motivation Brief history of wearable technologies and WBSNs State-of-the-art and recent advances Wearable medical technologies and devices, networks and frequency bands 1.4.1 Communication architecture 1.4.2 Physical layer 1.4.3 MAC sub-layer protocols 1.4.4 Routing protocols 1.4.5 IEEE 802.15.6 and 11073 standards 1.4.6 Frequency bands 1.4.7 Wireless devices 1.5 European- and global-funded research projects 1.6 Challenges 1.7 Main objectives and structure of the book References 2 Scenarios and applications for wearable technologies and WBSNs with energy harvesting Fernando J. Velez, Raúl Chávez-Santiago, Luís M. Borges, Norberto Barroca, Ilangko Balasingham, and Fardin Derogarian 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4

Introduction Classification of applications and characterization parameters Spectrum opportunities for RF-EH RF-EH solutions for WBAN 2.4.1 Single-band RF-EH solutions 2.4.2 Multi-band RF-EH solutions in the GSM 900/1800 bands 2.4.3 Supercapacitor-based energy storing system

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vi Wearable technologies and wireless body sensor networks for healthcare 2.5 MAC for opportunistic RF-EH for WBAN 2.5.1 Double stage MAC for radio cognitive networks 2.5.2 Opportunistic RF-EH for WBAN 2.6 An integrated circuit for low power wearable system 2.7 Discussion and concluding remarks References 3 A reliable wearable system for BAN applications with a high number of sensors and high data rate Fardin Derogarian, João Canas Ferreira, Vítor Grade Tavares, José Machado da Silva, and Fernando J. Velez 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Related work 3.3 Wearable system architecture 3.3.1 Characterization of the conductive yarns 3.3.2 Intra-network 3.3.3 Network layers 3.3.4 SNs, BS and CPM circuits 3.3.5 FPGA-based implementation of the physical and MAC layers 3.4 Experimental results 3.4.1 Communication at the MAC layer 3.4.2 Routing 3.4.3 Power consumption 3.5 The SRMCF routing protocol for sensor networks 3.5.1 Supported message types 3.5.2 Network setup 3.5.3 Link and node failure recovery 3.5.4 Analytical comparison of SRMCF and MCF protocols 3.5.5 Packet header length 3.5.6 Routing table size 3.5.7 Simulation and experimental results 3.6 Conclusion References 4 Implementation study of wearable sensors for human activity recognition systems Hamed Rezaie and Mona Ghassemian 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Application requirements 4.2.1 Sensory information 4.2.2 Data collection phase 4.2.3 Activity set

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Contents 4.2.4 Energy consumption 4.2.5 Processing 4.2.6 Obtrusiveness and user’s quality of experience 4.2.7 Trade-offs 4.3 Recognition architecture 4.3.1 Sensor data acquisition and preprocessing 4.3.2 Data segmentation 4.3.3 Feature extraction 4.3.4 Feature selection 4.3.5 Classification methods 4.3.6 Evaluating HAR systems 4.4 Communication platforms 4.4.1 Tier-1 4.4.2 Tier-2 4.4.3 Tier-3 4.5 HAR open problems 4.5.1 Recognition challenges 4.5.2 Hardware challenges 4.5.3 Communication challenges 4.6 Summary References 5 Electromagnetic characterisation of textile materials for the design of wearable antennas and systems Caroline Loss, Marco Rossi, Sam Agneessens, Ricardo Gonçalves, Hendrik Rogier, Pedro Pinho, and Rita Salvado 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Textile materials for the design of wearable antennas 5.2.1 Electromagnetic properties of materials 5.2.2 Brief survey on textile materials used in wearable antennas 5.3 Methods for the electromagnetic characterisation of dielectric textiles 5.3.1 Non-resonant methods 5.3.2 Resonant methods 5.4 Resonator-based experimental technique 5.4.1 Experimental procedure 5.4.2 Measurement results 5.4.3 Discussion of the results 5.4.4 Validation of the method 5.5 Conclusions Acknowledgements References

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viii Wearable technologies and wireless body sensor networks for healthcare 6 Human-movement identification using the radio signal strength in WBAN Sukhumarn Archasantisuk, Takahiro Aoyagi, Tero Uusitupa, Minseok Kim, and Jun-ichi Takada 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4

Introduction Related works Human motion classification system Data collection 6.4.1 Measurement campaign 6.4.2 Measurement results 6.5 Data preprocessing 6.5.1 Mean normalization 6.5.2 Segmentation 6.5.3 Feature extraction 6.5.4 Feature scaling 6.6 Classifier training 6.6.1 k-Nearest neighbor 6.6.2 Support vector machine 6.6.3 Decision tree 6.7 Classifier validation 6.7.1 Validation metrics 6.7.2 Validation results 6.8 Subset feature selection 6.8.1 Feature selection method 6.8.2 Evaluation of the subset feature vector compared to the all feature vector 6.9 Summary References

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7 Cognitive radio and RF energy harvesting for medical WBANS Fernando J. Velez, Raúl Chávez-Santiago, Norberto Barroca, Luís M. Borges, Jorge Tavares, and Ilangko Balsingham

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7.1 Introduction 7.2 Hospital scenarios 7.2.1 Cognitive radio solution in 2.4 GHz 7.2.2 Enhancement through the use of an additional channel 7.3 CR solution in the UWB band 7.4 Wireless body area networks 7.4.1 Introduction 7.4.2 Architecture for WBSNs with CR capabilities 7.4.3 Topology aspects 7.4.4 Hardware for the cognitive sensor node 7.5 Communication aspects of WBSNs with CR capabilities 7.5.1 PHY layer aspects 7.5.2 Medium access control sub-layer aspects

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Contents 7.5.3 Network layer aspects 7.6 Spectrum opportunities for RF energy harvesting 7.6.1 Average received power 7.6.2 Indoor opportunities 7.6.3 Outdoor opportunities 7.7 Innovative MAC protocols 7.7.1 BACK mechanism with BACK Request 7.7.2 Proposed scheme with no BACK Request 7.7.3 Modelling and simulation results 7.8 Conclusions References 8 Two innovative energy efficient IEEE 802.15.4 MAC sub-layer protocols with packet concatenation: employing RTS/CTS and multichannel scheduled channel polling Fernando J. Velez, Luís M. Borges, Norberto Barroca, and Periklis Chatzimisios 8.1 Introduction 8.2 IEEE 802.15.4 MAC enhancements 8.2.1 Analysis of the overhead in IEEE 802.15.4 MAC sub-layer 8.2.2 Discovery-addition state 8.2.3 Enhanced-two phase contention window mechanism 8.2.4 Adoption of the nonbeacon-enabled mode 8.3 IEEE 802.15.4 in the presence and absence of RTS/CTS 8.4 MC-SCP-MAC protocol 8.4.1 Influential range concept 8.4.2 Extra resolution phase decision algorithm (concatenation) 8.4.3 Node channel rendezvous scheduler 8.5 SBACK-MAC protocol 8.5.1 Unicast frame concatenation 8.5.2 Burst transmissions in the presence of block ACK request 8.5.3 Burst transmissions in the absence of block ACK request 8.6 Throughput and energy consumption 8.6.1 Maximum average throughput in the presence and absence of BACK request for the DSSS PHY layer 8.6.2 Impact of periodic traffic and exponential patterns in the overall performance with and without IR 8.6.3 Energy consumption for IEEE 802.15.4 in the presence and absence of RTS/CTS and SBACK-MAC 8.6.4 Energy performance on the number of source nodes from MC-SCP-MAC with and without IR 8.7 Conclusions and discussion 8.8 Suggestions for future work Acknowledgements References

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x Wearable technologies and wireless body sensor networks for healthcare 9

A precise low power and hardware-efficient time synchronization method for wearable systems Fardin Derogarian, João Canas Ferreira, Vítor Grade Tavares, José Machado da Silva, and Fernando J. Velez 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5

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Introduction Related work Motivation Description of the synchronization protocol Analytic characterization of the protocol 9.5.1 Instantaneous delay and skew 9.5.2 Average time skew 9.5.3 Impact of clock drift and update interval 9.5.4 Probability of synchronization 9.5.5 General protocol operation 9.6 The synchronization circuit 9.6.1 Control module 9.6.2 TC-counter and TS-counter modules 9.6.3 Sender–Receiver module 9.6.4 Timing request message 9.6.5 Timing reply message 9.6.6 Reception of timing messages 9.6.7 Implementation characteristics 9.7 Experimental results 9.7.1 Physical layer signaling 9.7.2 One-hop and multi-hop clock skew 9.7.3 Power consumption 9.7.4 Effects of timing message interval and failure on synchronization 9.8 Conclusion References

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10 Wearable sensor networks for human gait José Machado da Silva, Fardin Derogarian, João Canas Ferreira, and Vítor Grade Tavares 10.1 Introduction 10.2 Human gait 10.2.1 Gait modelling 10.2.2 Gait data characterization 10.3 Gait observation systems 10.3.1 Wearable body sensor networks 10.4 Conductive yarns 10.4.1 Variation of electrode-skin impedance and SNR during long-term monitoring

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Contents 10.5 A BSN for gait analysis – the ProLimb system 10.5.1 e-Leggings 10.5.2 Interconnections in a mesh network 10.5.3 Sensor nodes and central processing module 10.5.4 Data acquisition and network capability 10.5.5 Routing protocol 10.5.6 Sensors time synchronization 10.6 Lab experiments 10.7 Conclusion References 11 Integration of sensing devices and the cloud for innovative e-Health applications Albena Mihovska, Aristodemos Pnevmatikakis, Sofoklis Kyriazakos, Krasimir Tonchev, Razvan Craciunescu, Vladimir Poulkov, Harm op den Akker, and Hermie Hermens 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5

Introduction Requirements for e-health technical solutions eWALL system eWALL home environment eWALL cloud environment 11.5.1 Reasoning 11.5.2 Applications 11.6 eWALL innovation potential and challenges 11.7 Conclusions References 12 VitalResponder® : wearable wireless platform for vitals and body-area environment monitoring of first response teams João Paulo Silva Cunha, Susana Rodrigues, Duarte Dias, Pedro Brandão, Ana Aguiar, Ilídio Oliveira, José Maria Fernandes, Catarina Maia, Ana Rita Tedim, Ana Barros, Orangel Azuaje, Eduardo Soares, and Fernando de La Torre 12.1 Introduction 12.2 System architecture 12.2.1 Wearable on-body and body-area sensing devices 12.2.2 MANET for WBAN to data collector connectivity 12.2.3 VR ICT platform integration 12.3 Results 12.3.1 Studies with FFs 12.3.2 Studies with POs 12.3.3 Business concept validation 12.3.4 Supply chain strategy for wearable products

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xii Wearable technologies and wireless body sensor networks for healthcare 12.4 Conclusion Acknowledgments References 13 Wearable sensors for foetal movement monitoring in low risk pregnancies Luís M. Borges, Norberto Barroca, Fernando J. Velez, J. Martinez-de-Oliveira, and António S. Lebres 13.1 Introduction 13.2 The Flex Sensor technology 13.3 Schematic for the circuit with the Flex Sensor 13.3.1 Bend sensor voltage divider 13.3.2 Adjustable buffers 13.3.3 Variable deflection threshold switch 13.3.4 Resistance-to-voltage converter 13.3.5 Flex Sensor LED brightness 13.4 Voltage divider as input of the ADC 13.5 Computation of the Flex Sensor angle 13.6 Standalone Smart-Clothing Flex Sensor belt 13.6.1 Smart-Clothing Flex Sensor belt 13.6.2 Acquisition module 13.6.3 Acquisition module firmware 13.6.4 First version of Flex Sensor view software 13.6.5 Second version of Flex Sensor view software 13.6.6 Third version of Flex Sensor view software 13.7 Packet protocol interface 13.7.1 Acquisition module to PC 13.7.2 PC to acquisition module 13.8 Results 13.9 Other solutions for the monitoring belt 13.9.1 Smart-Clothing on-off belt 13.9.2 Belt with piezoelectric sensors 13.10 Wireless networking architecture 13.11 Conclusions Acknowledgements References 14 Radio frequency energy harvesting and storing in supercapacitors for wearable sensors Luís M. Borges and Fernando J. Velez 14.1 Introduction 14.1.1 Motivation 14.2 Self-sustainable devices

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Contents 14.2.1 RF energy harvesting using 5-stage Dickson voltage multiplier 14.2.2 Energy storage and supercapacitors 14.3 Design of the RF energy harvesting/storage system 14.3.1 Specifications 14.3.2 Characterization of traffic ambient scenarios 14.3.3 Front end block 14.3.4 Storage system control software 14.3.5 Back-end block 14.4 Performance evaluation 14.4.1 Average charging voltage in Csuper-cap 14.4.2 Average charging voltage per cycle in Csuper-cap 14.4.3 Normalized charging voltage in Csuper-cap 14.4.4 Charging time of Csuper-cap with limited cycles 14.4.5 Charging time per cycle of Csuper-cap 14.4.6 Csuper-cap voltage variation per cycle 14.4.7 Time and cycles estimation to attain different Csuper-cap voltages without harvesting device 14.4.8 Time estimation to attain different Csuper-cap voltages (with harvesting device) 14.4.9 Implications of supercapacitors in series or parallel configurations 14.4.10 Design of N -stage Dickson voltage multiplier for DTT band 14.4.11 Experimental results for the 5- and 7-stage Dickson voltage multipliers 14.4.12 Design of a half-wave dipole antenna for DTT band 14.4.13 Experimental results for the complete solution of the RF energy harvesting and storing system 14.4.14 Simultaneous multiband GSM and DTT RF energy harvester 14.5 RF harvesting/storage system design upgrade 14.6 Conclusions References 15 Conclusion Fernando J. Velez and Fardin Derogarian 15.1 Classification taxonomy and primary areas of innovation in wearable healthcare 15.2 Final overview References Index

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Foreword

Since 1975, the Polytechnic Institute of Covilhã, and then, in 1979, the University Institute of Beira Interior taught bachelor (3 years) and licenciatura (5 years) degrees in Textile Engineering, in its different areas. The University of Beira Interior (UBI) was created on 30 April 30, 1986 and an even richer blend of courses and subjects in the areas of production and textile manufacturing started to be offered in the Textile Engineering five-year degree. In the late 1980s or the beginning of the 1990s, the Center for Textile and Paper Materials was among the first research units that were created in fledging UBI. In 1992/93, the Ph.D. degree in Textile Engineering was created, one among several doctoral programmes (e.g., Electrical Engineering) that were accredited. In 2000, following the trend form industry on the creation of strong competences in the product domain, the licenciatura (5 year) degree in Fashion Design was created. Also in 1999/2000, the 5-year degree in Electrical Engineering (later Electrical and Computer Engineering) was created in UBI. In 29 May, 2002, a group of young professors who had recently concluded their doctoral studies, created the Covilhã site of Instituto de Telecomunicações (IT), as an external laboratory (that in 2008 was promoted to delegation from IT-Lisbon while UBI joined the IT partnership of Universities and Telecommunication Industries by becoming an institutional associated). In the first decade of the twenty-first century, research on smart and functional textiles, embedded electronic sensors in smart fabrics and clothing and wireless body sensor networks (WBSNs), in the broad field of wearable technologies, attracted the attention of researchers from UBI and its research centres (FibEnTech, CICS and IT). This group of enthusiastic researchers, together with colleagues from the Department of Physics, Health Sciences Faculty and Hospital Pero da Covilhã, embraced basic and applied collaborative research with industry, also aiming at innovation, e.g., in the framework of Smart-clothing, SIVIC, PROENERGY-WSN and CREaTION research projects while creating an international network of collaborations. The book on ‘Wearable Technologies and Wireless Body Sensor Networks for Healthcare’ to be included in the Healthcare Technologies series from IET puts together the research and development efforts of the editors and co-authors of more than one decade of research on wearable technologies, IoT and WBSNs for healthcare within their own groups. Recent research on wearable technologies and WBSNs for healthcare comes here to light. The book topics span from scenarios and WSBN communication-applications to sensor devices and systems, activity recognition, smart textiles and their applications

xvi Wearable Technologies and Wireless Body Sensor Networks for Healthcare to smart sensing, radio frequency (RF) propagation aspects, modelling of this very complex communication environments, measurements and cognitive radio, link layer, medium access and control sub-layer protocols and synchronisation aspects. It also covers the rich blend of medical applications of WBSNs as well as the underlying wearable solutions and the need for standardization. The book, on the one hand, illustrates conceptual aspects and applications, and it provides a new vision in characterising wearable technologies and the need for interoperability, on the other hand. Energy harvesting within wearable solutions is a key issue since it allows for improving energy efficiency and reliability in wearable antenna and sensor devices, algorithms, protocols and networks. It will certainly motivate new generations of students, researchers and practitioners to start their own path in this very promising field of research while seeking innovation. Covilhã, February 2019 Manuel José dos Santos Silva Full Professor from UBI

Preface

About the book: Instrumenting the human body and building wireless sensor networks constitutes a challenge beyond instrumenting the personal area and its networks, a goal that was achieved in the early 2000s. In 2018 and coming years, not only investigating low-power solutions and technologies that are harmless to human being are challenging for the research community but also to address ways to give intelligence to the way sensing and processing are performed, as well as applying cognition to radio and network communications together with energy efficiency and harvesting. The quick growth of smart textiles, high-performance low-power multi-hop networks, efficient processing techniques for smart antennas and ultra wideband represent a stimulus to provide new applications for on-, in- and body-to-body wearable communications for the human body well-being. Hence, continuous advances in wearable technologies, sensors and smart Wireless Body Area Networks for different applications, e.g., sport activity and health monitoring, radio communication aspects, including radio channel characterisation, and especially energy efficient solutions with energy harvesting and storage have been sufficient reasons that have encouraged the necessity to collect a variety of experience in this field. Thanks to that, a new book has been prepared whose title is “Wearable Technologies and Wireless Body Sensor Networks for Healthcare” to be included in the Healthcare Technologies series from IET. The book’s topics span from scenarios and WBSN communication-applications to sensor devices and systems, activity recognition, smart textiles and their applications to smart sensing, RF propagation aspects, modelling of this very complex communication environments, measurements and cognitive radio, link layer, Medium Access and Control (MAC) sub-layer protocols and synchronisation aspects, the rich blend of medical applications of WBSNs as well as the underlying wearable solutions, and the need for standardization. The book, on the one hand, illustrates conceptual aspects and applications, and it provides a new vision in characterising wearable technologies and the need for interoperability, on the other hand. Energy harvesting within wearable solutions is a key issue since it allows for improving energy efficiency and reliability in wearable antenna and sensor devices, algorithms, protocols and networks. Contents: Apart from “Introduction” (Chapter 1) and “Conclusion” (Chapter 15), the book is organized into six main parts: 1. WBSN Communication-applications and Scenarios (Chapters 2 and 3) 2. Devices and Systems (Chapter 4) 3. Textile Materials for Wearable Applications (Chapter 5) 4. Propagation Aspects and CR (Chapters 6 and 7)

xviii Wearable Technologies and Wireless Body Sensor Networks for Healthcare 5. Link Layer, MAC Sub-layer and Synchronization Aspects (Chapters 8 and 9) 6. Applications of Wearable Technologies and WBSNs (Chapters 10–14) In more detail, the book is organized as follows: Chapter 2 presents a comprehensive overview from deployments scenarios and the underlying sets of applications as well as the characterization of wearable technologies and solutions that support them. A wearable BAN system to use for both medical and non-medical applications, including large number of sensors (