Body Sensor Networks (BSN)
The last decade has witnessed a rapid surge of interest in new sensing and monitoring devices for healthcare and the use of wearable/wireless devices for clinical applications. One key development in this area is implantable in vivo monitoring and intervention devices. While the problem of long-term stability and biocompatibility is being addressed, several promising prototypes are starting to emerge for managing patients with acute diabetes, for treatment of epilepsy and other debilitating neurological disorders and for monitoring of patients with chronic cardiac diseases. Despite the technological developments of sensing and monitoring devices, issues related to system integration, sensor miniaturization, low-power sensor interface circuitry design, wireless telemetric links and signal processing have still to be investigated. Moreover, issues related to Quality of Service, security, multi-sensory data fusion, and decision support are active research topics. To address general issues related to using wearable/wireless and implantable sensors and to bring together scientists from computing, electronics, bioengineering, medicine and industry, the term BSN – Body Sensor Networks was coined by Prof Guang-Zhong Yang of Imperial College in 2002 and after much preparation, the first International Workshop on BSN was launched in 2004. Some of the key research focuses of the BSN community includes the latest technological developments and clinical applications of:
Novel bioelectrical, biochemical, biophysical, and mechanical sensors
Hardware considerations: low power RF transceiver, energy scavenging, battery technology, miniaturisation, system integration, process and cost of manufacturing
Biocompatibility and materials
Context awareness and multi-sensor data fusion
Data inferencing, knowledge discovery, and prediction
Quality of service, trust and security issues
Autonomic sensor networks
Standards and light-weight communication protocols
Integration with ambient sensing with applications in smart dwellings, and home monitoring
Wearable and implantable sensor integration and development platforms
Clinical applications of body-sensor networks