Optimal and Efficient Sensor Design for 5G-Based Internet-of-Body Healthcare Monitoring Network

Abstract

The Internet of Body (IoB), a subset of wireless sensor networks, has emerged as a promising technology in the biomedical field. The applications of the IoB, particularly in healthcare and medical applications, have attracted significant attention in recent years. The IoB, also known as a Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN), consists of small sensors placed on the human body, which can collect physiological data and facilitate remote operations such as processing, treatment, assessment and decision-making via the Internet network. This paper presents detailed theoretical and experimental studies on the design of sensors for a 5G-based IoB healthcare monitoring network. The need for efficient and high-performance sensors, in the healthcare industry for enabling continuous monitoring of patient’s health in real-time, is highlighted along this work. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for designing and analyzing the performance of IoB antenna sensors, specifically focusing on channel modeling and power-consumption between wearable wireless sensors. The behavior of the sensors on the human body is studied both theoretically and experimentally for two optimal locations: on the human body waist and on human arm-hand. The results are compared to assess the accuracy of the theoretical model. Despite the complexity of the physiological behavior of the human body, our findings show a good agreement between the theoretical and experimental results. This work provides valuable insights into the design and optimization of IoB/WBANs for real-world medical applications.