WBAN (Wireless Body Area Network)

They are formed by a group of sensors spreads through the body (glued to the clothes, under the skin and others) which, through wireless technologies, monitor a person’s physical conditions and transmit the information collected to a “server” (on-line or not). For instance: we will consider an athlete who intends to be monitored at distance by his/her coach. First the athlete dresses a special clothes prepared to carry the sensors which compose a WBAN net. These sensors, during the practice of the physical exercises, will collect and transmit the athlete’s data to his/her smartphone. This communication can happen via Bluetooth, ZigBee, UWB (Ultra Wideband) or any other personal wireless technology. The smartphone, through a program, will interpret the data collected by the sensors and will transform them in reports. In the sequence, such reports will be sent to a HTTP server through the net of cellular telephony (GPRS, EDGE, EV-DO, HSDPA, etc). The coach, finally, will visualize and evaluate his/her athlete’s performance by connecting his/her laptop computer to the internet and pointing his/her browser to an predetermined URL.

Apart from the example, the WBAN nets are already being used in other several areas, such as patients rehabilitation in physiotherapy clinics. By the way, on PubMed Central site (PMC), which is an important digital repository of medical publications, there are many articles which make reference to this technology. One of them, called “ACCELEROMETER-BASED WIRELESS BODY AREA NETWORK TO ESTIMATE INTENSITY OF THERAPY IN POST-ACUTE”, proposes the use of accelerometers to evaluate a patient, beyond, of course, of aiding in his/her treatment. The accelerometers, in this case, forms a WBAN net. It detects, with accuracy, all the movements executed by the patient and it transmits everything to a Tablet PC. The Tablet PC “translates” the information received through a program and shows the patient’s complete diagnosis for the responsible physiotherapist.

The future of WBAN began to be developed in Brazil. As proof, we can mention the presentation of this technology in an event that happened recently in São Paulo city. During the exhibition of the panel: “The Paper of the Wireless Technologies in the Applications of Health and Bank”, representatives of several sections (as hospitals, mobile operators, Anatel, programmers and other) got to know and led off the discussions concerning future WBAN projects in the carnival land.