Body Area Networks

—Recent technologies in electronics allow to build wireless sensor networks in on or around the human body. Body Area Networks (BAN, is also called Body Sensor Networks) is not only used in medical applications but also has non-medical applications areas such as entertainment, military. This paper reviews the main features of BAN. It also covers the requirements for BAN infrastructure by giving an example of an existing application. We propose a hybrid method to improve existing BAN infrastructure as we call Intelligent Body Sensor Networks (IBSN). We also introduce the new IEEE 802.15.6 standard and point the similarities and differences with existing standards. In addition, we show the numerical results for a lifetime optimized body sensor network requiring a transmission-free area. Our discussion states the trade-off between reliability vs security for such kind of BAN.