Body Area Networks (BAN)

Over the last decade, developments in miniaturization and low-powered electronics have led to the development of wireless sensor networks (WSNs), which are computational systems with the ability not only to sense their environments, but also to process and communicate the data obtained using a wireless channel. This book focuses on a specific class of WSNs, called body area networks (BANs) (also known in the literature as body sensor networks), which are networks of wireless sensors worn on or implanted within the human body and have the potential to revolutionize healthcare by enabling anytime and anywhere health monitoring and actuation.”
Sandeep K. S. Gupta, Tridib Mukherjee and Krishna Kumar Venkatasubramanian
in their book, “Body Area Networks: Safety, Security, and Sustainability.”

WSNs and a sub-set thereof, BANs, are examples of Machine to Machine (M2M) communications that are already beginning to proliferate on carrier networks around the world.

Further into the abovementioned book, is the following excerpt, “A body area network (BAN) is a network consisting of a heterogeneous set of nodes that can sense, actuate, compute, and communicate with each other through a multi-hop wireless channel. A BAN collects, processes, and stores physiological (such as electrocardiogram (ECG) and blood pressure), activity (such as walking, running, and sleeping), and environmental (such as ambient temperature, humidity, and presence of allergens) parameters from the host’s body and its immediate surroundings; and can even actuate treatment (such as drug delivery), on the basis of the data collected.”

Rather than just providing wireless services, the possible value-add for carriers is to build frameworks (including OSS with APIs) that make it easy for customers to integrate wireless sensor networks (WSNs) into their carriage services.

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