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Luis Filipe 1, 2 and Florentino Fdez-Riverola 1 and Nuno Costa 2, 3 and António Pereira 2, 3
Academic Editor:Sigeru Omatu
1, Higher Technical School of Computer Engineering, University of Vigo, Polytechnic Building, Campus Universitario As Lagoas s/n, 32004 Ourense, Spain
2, Computer Science and Communications Research Centre, School of Technology and Management, Polytechnic Institute of Leiria, 2411-901 Leiria, Portugal
3, INOV INESC INNOVATION, Institute of New Technologies of Leiria, 2411-901 Leiria, Portugal
Received 19 May 2015; Accepted 29 June 2015; 19 October 2015
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
1. Introduction
With ageing of the population, existing medical resources cannot satisfy future healthcare demands of seniors and patients. Resources are limited and it is impossible for most patients to afford long-term hospital stays due to economic restrictions, work, and other reasons, even though their health status must be monitored in a real-time [1] or short periodic time mode. As a result, wireless monitoring medical systems will become part of mobile healthcare centers with real-time monitoring in the future.
In this context, WBAN supporting healthcare applications can offer valuable contributions to improve patient healthcare, including diagnosis and/or therapeutics monitoring. In a short time, WBAN technology has taken its first steps in the medical rehabilitation and monitoring of patients. However, underlying technology is still in an early development stage and typically based on very specific wireless communications technologies. Patients may be comfortably monitored at home while carrying out their daily activities, and medical staff have to monitor many patients simultaneously. The balance between these generally conflicting features means that research in this arena is not finished. In this area, data reliability, power consumption, and small size are very important characteristics to consider when choosing appropriate WBAN sensor nodes. Many studies have been focused on WBANs for medical purposes. However, few works have been concerned with a global solution for tens or hundreds of patients, each of whom is fitted with multiple sensor nodes, and confined to a relatively small environment like an infirmary or a living or dining room of a hospital. Until now, some of the research and studies carried out...