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Design of Wearable Health Monitoring Systems: An Overview of Techniques and Technologies

  • Chapter
mHealth Ecosystems and Social Networks in Healthcare

Part of the book series: Annals of Information Systems ((AOIS,volume 20))

Abstract

Because of the increasing costs of healthcare, wearable health monitoring systems (WHMS) are catching a lot of attention of the research community. Such systems are more and more propelled by advances in technology such as miniaturization, sensing devices and wireless communications. This study aims to review and synthesis the main implementation techniques and technologies used to design WHM Systems on the basis of the typical WBAN three-tiers architecture where the Body Area Network (BAN) represents the key infrastructure of such systems.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Generally, a BAN (or BSN / BASN [6]) consists of a set of different types of sensors plus the Base station (presented and described below). Generally, we talk about WBAN (Wireless BAN), since wireless communication are the most commonly used [7]. Thus, this study focuses on this latter .

  2. 2.

    Also known as Body Gateway, (portable) Personal Server or device (PS/PD), Body Control Unit (BCU) or Central Node [2, 9].

  3. 3.

    Sink role. In some architectures, sink and base station are considered as two different elements [10].

  4. 4.

    Used to digitize and filter analog raw data before they are transmitted to the MBU [3, 11].

  5. 5.

    On: for wearable, and within: for implantable [5]. Noting that this study doesn’t address the sensors placed within body, i.e., implantable sensors but rather focus on wearable ones.

  6. 6.

    An easy to use and lightweight shirt with embedded sensors.

  7. 7.

    However this study doesn’t cover actuators and their aspects but rather focus on sensing devices.

  8. 8.

    See Sect. 2.2.4.

  9. 9.

    It is worth noting and not forgetting basic functionalities available from simple mobile phones that can also be useful for the interaction of different users of monitoring systems, like text messaging considered as an easy to use, low cost and of public interests capability [35].

  10. 10.

    See Sect. 2.2.4.

  11. 11.

    Premature Ventricular Complexes—extra heartbeats.

Abbreviations

AP:

Access Point

BAN:

Body Area Network

BASN:

Body Area Sensor Network

BCU:

Body Control Unit

BLE:

Bluetooth Low Energy

BSN:

Body Sensor Network

ECG:

Electrocardiogram

GPRS:

General Packet Radio Service

GPS:

Global Positioning System

GSM:

Global System for Mobile communications

GUI:

Graphical User Interface

ICT:

Information and Communications Technology

IEEE:

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

IP:

Internet Protocol

IrDA:

Infrared Data Association

ISM:

Industrial, Scientific and Medical

MBU:

Mobile Base Unit

MICS:

Medical Implant Communication Service

PD:

Personal Device

PDA:

Personal Digital Assistant

PS:

Personal Server

PVC:

Premature Ventricular Complexes

RSS:

Received Signal Strength

SFE:

Sensor Front-End

SMS:

Short Message Service

UMTS:

Universal Mobile Telecommunications System

UWB:

Ultra-Wide Band

WBAN:

Wireless Body Area Network

WHMS:

Wearable Health Monitoring System

WiFi:

Wireless Fidelity

WLAN:

Wireless Local Area Network

WWAN:

Wireless Wide Area Network

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. CERIST, Centre for Research on Scientific and Technical Information, Algiers, Algeria

    Amine Boulemtafes & Nadjib Badache

  2. University of Béjaïa Mira Abderahman, Béjaïa, Algeria

    Amine Boulemtafes

  3. USTHB, University of Technology and Science Houari BOUMEDIENE, Algiers, Algeria

    Nadjib Badache

Authors
  1. Amine Boulemtafes
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Correspondence to Amine Boulemtafes .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Peloponnese, Tripoli, Greece

    Athina A. Lazakidou

  2. Department of Mathematics, University of the Aegean, Karlovassi, Samos, Greece

    Stelios Zimeras

  3. Biomedical Engineering Laboratory, National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece

    Dimitra Iliopoulou

  4. School of Electrical & Comp. Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Zografou, Athens, Greece

    Dionysios-Dimitrios Koutsouris

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Boulemtafes, A., Badache, N. (2016). Design of Wearable Health Monitoring Systems: An Overview of Techniques and Technologies. In: Lazakidou, A., Zimeras, S., Iliopoulou, D., Koutsouris, DD. (eds) mHealth Ecosystems and Social Networks in Healthcare. Annals of Information Systems, vol 20. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23341-3_6

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