Energy-efficient and Heterogeneous Implantable Body Sensor Network

Applications of body sensor networks (BSN) in health-care are growing rapidly. The number of implanted sensors used to accurately prognose and diagnose the medical conditions are increasing. The implanted medical devices (IMD), for example pace-makers are improvised for delivering patient centric therapies. These IMD require continuous pathological information about the disease from the implanted sensors to ensure the therapeutic value of the treatment. A reliable wireless communication between these heterogeneous medical sensors and devices is essential. The medical sensors and devices have dynamic requirements for wireless communication in terms of throughput, duty-cycle and latency. Fault-tolerant communication links must be devised for medical-emergencies. Wireless communication between the in-body and on-body sensor nodes should be supported. The amount of energy available to the in-body sensor nodes is very limited, which puts forth a strict requirement of ultra-low power consumption. In this work we aim to develop wireless communication protocol which will address the complex requirements of IBSN. This paper briefly explains the research problem and the focus of the research. Preliminary results obtained from the initial work including the characteristics of in-body radio channel and performance of MAC protocols are presented. This paper will identify the research challenges and discuss the planned research approach.