Towards Interference-Free, Self-Organizing, Battery-Less Wireless Body Area Networks

Recent developments and technological advancements in wireless communication, MicroElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS) technology and integrated circuits has enabled low-power, intelligent, miniaturized, invasive/non-invasive micro and nano-technology sensor nodes strategically placed in or around the human body to be used in various applications, such as personal health monitoring. However, Due to the scarce limitation of resources in these networks in terms of small battery capacity, limited bandwidth and their dense deployment in crowded areas, the practical deployment of these networks is yet at stand by. WBANs are cyber-physical systems that are designed to provide a vast era of applications from real-time health care to personal entertainment services. They can not be considered as static networks, therefore, they are subject to change and must able to cope with the variations in their network. These variations can be in terms of topological changes, variations in traffic patterns, changes in overall load on the network. Additionally, the environment in WBANs is nondeterministic which implies taking the same action on the same state for two different occasions may lead to different states. Therefore smart techniques must be deployed in these networks to take these unknown dynamics into account. However, adaptive approaches require frequent exchange of information and lead to a linear cost in updating information. In addition, the broadcast nature of the wireless spectrum and the limited radio bandwidth leads to interference between devices involved in communication between coexisting WBANs. In addition, power is a scarce resource in WBANs as sensors are battery driven. Moreover, future WBANs are prone to excessive interference in densely populated areas which can significantly degrade network performance and quickly depletes the energy of WBAN nodes. This issue is highlighted even in medical applications that deal with mission critical information where unreliable data collection endangers the life of millions of people. This talk encounters these challenges for the practical deployment of WBANs to increase their throughput, minimize interference, increase network lifetime, adapt to network variations, prolong battery savings, be able to self-organize and last but not least be simple as possible to avoid computational calculations which eat up the energy of the network.
Samaneh Movassaghi received a B.Sc. from University of Tehran in 2009 and a Masters by Research in Telecommunication Engineering from the University of Technology, Sydney in 2012. Samaneh is currently a PhD candidate at the Australian National University (ANU) and is conducting research in the field of Wireless Body Area Networks. She has authored more than 20 papers in the area of wireless body area networks with over 174 citations and is currently an IEEE Student member. Samaneh has been the recipient of numerous scholarships and awards some are as follows: UTS International Research Scholarship (IRS), UTS President's scholarship (UTSP), ANU Scholarship and NICTA Scholarship.