Computer Networks 83 (2015) 363–380

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Computer Networks
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/comnet

Survey Paper

Application specific study, analysis and classification of body

area wireless sensor network applications
Adnan Nadeem, Muhammad Azhar Hussain ⇑, Obaidullah Owais, Abdul Salam, Sarwat Iqbal,
Kamran Ahsan
Federal Urdu University of Arts, Science and Technology, Karachi, Pakistan

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The evolution of wearable computing and advances in wearable sensor devices has moti-
Received 6 November 2013 vated various applications of Body Area Sensor Networks (BASN). In the last few years body
Received in revised form 27 December 2014 areas sensor networks have emerged as a major type of wireless sensor networks (WSN).
Accepted 2 March 2015
This emerging networking technology can be used in various walks of life. A number of sur-
Available online 11 March 2015
veys have been published on MAC or the physical layer mechanism of BASN but very few
have focused on studying it from the application point of view. In this paper, we first
Keywords:
review, from literature, existing use of body area sensor network and classify and then
Body area sensor networks
Wireless sensor network
its application domain. Within these application domains of BASN, we propose a feasibility
Classification of BASN applications of scenarios where BASN can be used for both application and technical aspects. In addi-
tion, we classify the use of BASN from literature, based on certain parameters. Finally,
we discuss and highlight issues where further research can be conducted in the future.
Ó 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Body area sensor network (BASN) standard is an output
of the project of IEEE Wireless Personal Area Network
working group [1]. This standard introduces the frame-
work for BASN, which includes the network topology and
the reference model explaining the supporting func-
tionality of nodes and centric device. It also defines the
functionality of the MAC sub layer and physical layer.
BASN enables novel uses of this networking technology,
especially in healthcare, fitness, entertainment, sports,
etc. BASN allows users to connect wireless devices they
carry on or with them. We have seen tremendous growth
in wearable sensor devices for healthcare and beyond in
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: adnan.nadeem@fuuast.edu.pk (A. Nadeem), a.hussain
@fuuast.edu.pk (M.A. Hussain), o.owais@fuuast.edu.pk (O. Owais), a.salam@
fuuast.edu.pk (A. Salam), s.iqbal@fuuast.edu.pk (S. Iqbal), kamran.ahsan@
fuuast.edu.pk (K. Ahsan).
the last few years that has created opportunities for using
BASN in various application domains.
However, there are obstacles to widespread adoption of
BASN. In [2] authors have first defined both manufacturer
and user oriented requirement for widespread adoption
of BASN. Major requirements include safety for human
from wearable and implanted sensors, compatibility in
terms of interoperability of nodes in a BASN, communica-
tion protocol and data storage, security and ease of use.
They introduced the BASN environment as shown in
Fig. 1. They have also highlighted major challenges faced
by BASN, which are as follows:
 Trade-off between processing and communication
 Data rate and power consumption
 Increased attenuation as compared to other applica-
tions of WSN
 On-node storage, Energy Harvesting
A number of surveys of BASN have been published. For
example, in [3], authors have reviewed the existing MAC

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.comnet.2015.03.002
1389-1286/Ó 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
364 A. Nadeem et al. / Computer Networks 83 (2015) 363–380
Fig. 1. A body area sensor network environment [5].
layer protocol fulfilling the low power consumption
requirement of BASN. They have classified power efficient
mechanism in categories (lower power listening, sched-
uled contention and TDMA based mechanism) and then
investigated their strength and weakness. In [4] authors
reviewed the channel estimation techniques for multiband
UWB communication and summarized them on the basis
of their operations, matrix used and suitability for their
implementation in healthcare. In [5] authors first pre-
sented a review of physical layer communications mecha-
nisms, including antenna design, in body radio frequency
communication, propagation patterns. Then they reviewed
the low power MAC layer mechanisms for BASN. Finally,
they reviewed routing strategies for BASN. Barakah and
Ammad-uddin [6] have presented a survey of challenges
and applications of BASN in healthcare. They have also pro-
posed the role of BASN as a virtual doctor by defining its
architecture. Similarly, in [7] authors have investigated
the sensor devices used in BASN and their physical and
MAC layer mechanism. They have also reviewed some
BASN projects and highlighted some design challenges
and issues. Considering that most of the work has focused
on reviewing only physical layer mechanisms [1] or MAC
layer mechanisms [2] or both [3,4], and most of these sur-
veys have focused on BASN applications in healthcare; only
in [4] the authors have highlighted some BASN projects
outside healthcare. In contrast to [1–4], we first review
the existing use of BASN in various application domains.
Additionally, we propose various novel scenarios where
BASN implementation is feasible.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In
Section 2, we introduce the major application domains
for BASN. Section 3 presents the review of existing BASN
application proposals from literature. In Section 4 we pre-
sent our classification and analysis of existing BASN appli-
cations. In Section 5, we propose a feasibility of BASN use
in some special scenarios as future research directions.
Finally, Section 6 summarizes the work in this paper.
2. Application domain
In this section, we introduce some major application
domains of body area sensor networks.
2.1. Healthcare
Healthcare is the diagnosis, treatment and prevention
of disease, illness, injury and other physical and mental
impairments in humans [8] as well as in animals. The
world is facing many issues related to provide healthcare
services to the peoples, especially with an aging pop-
ulation. In future, this ratio is expected to increase, and
the shortage of medical staff and doctors is observed as a
 A. Nadeem et al. / Computer Networks 83 (2015) 363–380
major issue. According to the World Health Organization
(WHO) there are around 600 million persons aged 60 years
and above, which is expected to rise to 1200 million per-
sons in year 2025 [9], this statistic suggests the require-
ment for enhancement of immediate medical facility. To
achieve sustainable access, effectiveness and quality of
clinical processes, we suggest the use of technological solu-
tion for providing health services, especially in developing
countries. The BASN can play a vital role in the provision of
efficient healthcare services, reduce the burden on the
clinical system and in fact using BASN could increase the
throughput of the healthcare service providers.
2.2. Disability assistance
Around one billion people of the world or 15% of the
world population is suffering from some kind of disability
[10] out of which 10% are victims of severe disabilities such
as paralysis, blindness, learning disability and strongly
depend upon support from their family, on government
or any non-government organization. Disability ranges
from mild to severe such as weak eyesight, slight lameness
to paralysis and complete blindness. The life expectancy
rate has increased in European countries as the result of
provision of better healthcare services and enhanced qual-
ity of life. The population above the age of 65 years [11] is
increasing and thus the demand for nursing homes for
older people, hospital and work force required for provid-
ing care to this group is also increasing.
Effects of disability can be greatly reduced by providing
assistance to disabled persons and enabling them to per-
form activities of daily living [10]. Assistive technology
aims to overcome the effects of disability, improve the effi-
ciency, and increase the capability of disabled person to
perform those activities that are otherwise difficult to per-
form. Assistive Technology (AT) enables persons with dis-
abilities to become more independent in their lives, take
care of basic needs, and actively participate in community
activities and in obtaining employment. AT devices can be
classified into two types, i.e. active and passive. An active
AT device requires direct involvement of disabled persons
in providing assistance such as an electric wheelchair for
mobility-impaired person, and the white cane for blind
person. While a passive AT device functions without inter-
vention of the disabled person such as a fall detection sys-
tem, fire & a flood detection system for those disabled and
older people which live alone in their home.
2.3. Sports
BASN is used in sports for training, monitoring, self-
assessment as well as enhancement of the sports person
performance. This is achieved by monitoring physiological
parameters such as Gait length, heart rate, Oximetry, and
acceleration. These parameters will be different for each
sport.
The manufacturers produce different types of sensors
for sports and fitness. Smartphone and wearable watches
are being connected to BASN. A good example is the Nike
iPod sports kit, in which the sensor is placed beneath the
sock liner of the left shoe and the receiver connects to
365
iPod. The sensor is used to measure pace, distance, time
elapsed and calories burned. The information is transmit-
ted wirelessly to the receiver and the Nike tracking device
for real-time feedback during training. Current researchers
used accelerometers on a body to identify the specific pos-
tures. With the help of these technologies, players of many
sports such as football, cricket and golf, can easily improve
their performance and also protect themselves from inju-
ries due to incorrect postures.
2.4. Human activity monitoring
BASN can also be used to monitor the human activities
in the context of providing security or care for humans.
Human activities can be detected using analysis of various
postures of the human body during the movement. There
are various inertial wearable sensors developed for the
recognition of various human postures. This activity moni-
toring could not only analyse the elderly, children, and dis-
abled person, but also it can be used to assist them in
certain scenarios.
3. Review of existing BASN applications
In this section, we study and review existing applica-
tions of BASN.
3.1. Healthcare applications of BASN
The major application domain of BASN is healthcare use
for monitoring and providing self-care functions of
physiological changes in the body. In this section, we
review the research literature focused on the Healthcare
issues, categorized in three sections:
(a) General Healthcare (b) Neonatal Healthcare (c)
Animal Healthcare.
3.1.1. BASN for general healthcare
In this subsection we present a review of proposed
mechanisms where BASN system is suggested or imple-
ment for general Healthcare. To fight against cardio-
vascular disease (CVD) MyHeart [12,13] project is in
progress. The MyHeart project supported by thirty-three
partners from 10 different countries, including research
institutes, academia, medical hospitals and different indus-
trial partners like Philips, Nokia, Vodafone and Medtronic,
a world-leader in cardiac technology. The idea of this pro-
ject is based on functional clothes or smart clothes in
which sensors are either integrated or simply embedded
in the piece of clothing [14]. These sensors are powered
from a centralized on-body power supply. This system is
a self-managed monitoring system of CVD and it is capable
of transmitting data to a remote location so that profes-
sional doctors or clinical staff can provide healthy lifestyle
suggestions whilst monitoring real time patient status for
preventative purposes or early prognosis to avoid critical
emergencies.
The author in [15] presented a heart rate monitoring
system based on fuzzy logic. The proposed heart rate
monitoring system, a continuation of their previous work,
366 A. Nadeem et al. / Computer Networks 83 (2015) 363–380
is consisting of monitoring of electrocardiogram (ECG),
heart rate (HR), three axes body acceleration and tempera-
ture sensors. State of health could be inferred based on the
calculation of the autonomous heart rate variability (HRV)
from the HR data using the threshold based model. This
model simply monitors the ECG amplitude and compares
it with the present threshold value during the different
states of the body like exercise, lying or resting and stand-
ing position.
The BASN is playing a vital role in real-time monitoring
of healthcare. Different types of wearable sensors monitor
different human physiological signs like blood pressure,
body temperature, ECG, blood flow. The sensed data is sent
to the caretaker or medical centre by using Bluetooth or
wireless communication for real-time monitoring and ana-
lysing of human health condition [16,17]. In [18] author
developed a web based remote health-monitoring inter-
face named ‘‘Health Face’’. BASN system consists of
MICAz nodes and Crossbow MTS400 sensor board. MICAz
nodes have an ATmega128L microcontroller including
internal memory, and a Chipcon CC2420 RF transmitter
based on IEEE 802.15.4 standard. The MTS400 board is
used for sensing the temperature, light, pressure, humidity,
and acceleration. MIB520CA acts as a base station (PDA or
Cell phone) for connecting the computer with the wireless
sensor nodes through USB. The flow of the process is to
send sensed data to the base station, which transmits this
data to the medical centre server using Wi-Fi technology.
The Health Face software is designed using MATLAB
Builder NE with Web Figure and .Net technology. This
web-based application is secured by providing User-ID
and Password for authentication purpose. If the data
received from any sensor cross its predefined threshold
level defined in the software for different sensors, the soft-
ware generates an emergency alarm to its doctor or care-
giver for immediate necessary action.
Authors in [19] suggested that EEG (electroencephalo-
gram) signals can be monitored continuously by hospital
staff ubiquitously without the personal visit or direct inter-
vention of the patient. They proposed a BASN system, help-
ing patients to send EEG signals through a smart phone to a
remote terminal. The authors suggested Block sparse
Bayesian learning (BSBL) as a new method to EEG com-
pressed sensing. Block Sparse Bayesian learning answers
the problem of energy consumption, data consumption
and device cost. In this proposed method EEG signals have
been compressed using sensors, hence utilizing the on chip
energy of BASN. EEG signals return to normal state by a
remote computer, hence not using the energy of sensor
node in BASN thus the energy of BASN is not wasted.
3.1.2. Neonatal healthcare monitoring
In this subsection we review proposed BASN systems for
neonatal health care from the literature. The smart jacket
[20] is designed for neonatal monitoring with wearable
sensors; the purpose of this jacket is to provide wearable
unobtrusive continuous health monitoring as well as a
comfortable clinical environment for the new-born. The
wearable jacket system design specially overcomes the
level of discomfort faced by clinical staff in monitoring vital
parameters of the neonate. This wearable jacket is a kind of
smart textile; the design of a jacket contains the integration
of conductive textiles for ECG monitoring. This jacket is
open at the front and has an open structure fabric on the
back and the hat. The design of the jacket ensures the
skin-on-skin contact, phototherapy and medical observa-
tion. The concept of Diversity Textile Electrode
Measurement (DTEM) is chosen in which neonate wears a
baby jacket. It contains six conductive patches that sense
bio-potential signals at different positions to perform
diversity measurements. The placement of conductive
patches chooses with the care so that they will always
remain in contact with the skin for un-abrupt communica-
tion. The patches consist of silver and gold textile elec-
trodes cover with different layer of tricot for safety purpose.
In [21] author presents a health monitoring system for
the kids named KiMS. The KiMS focus on four fundamental
features, i.e. early detection of infectious disease, monitor-
ing of healthy habits, post treatment monitoring and
detection of chronic health issues. For monitoring several
parameters, the authors suggested a wristband type device
which has a temperature and pulse rate sensor, micro-
phone, processor, memory, and Bluetooth module. The
proposed health monitoring system is based on acoustic
signal processing. The authors in this paper extracted fea-
tures from babies’ audio signals of interest and classified
hem to identify certain health parameters such as cough,
sneeze, cry and vomit by comparing with the training
set. The resultant detected audio events will examine along
with the data received from the temperature and pulse
rate sensor for monitoring health situation. The author
describes the events using vocabulary-based encoding
scheme, assign 4-bits that represent the cough, sneeze,
etc. and 3-bit for identifying 8 different times of the day.
This coding scheme minimizes the bandwidth with low
power operations and efficient utilization of storage space
in the device. The proposed system is also capable of
generating alert to the day-care specialist in case of any
emergency. The authors claimed that gathering the
extracted voice and sensor data history helps clinical staff
in monitoring of a new-born baby or child. The author dis-
played the test result, which suggest using at-least third or
higher level of wavelet decomposition for improvement in
performance of the classification algorithm.
3.1.3. Animal healthcare monitoring
Animal agriculture plays an important part in the world
economy. Several researchers have proposed different
models for the monitoring of animal healthcare using
wearable sensors and Mobile Technology [22]. Quality of
meat has improved in the last few years, but due to the
lack of animal healthcare respiratory disease a variety of
gastrointestinal and metabolic diseases exists [23]. The
wearable sensors with the integration of wireless technol-
ogy benefit the real-time overall health diagnoses of ani-
mals [24] and especially the chronic diseases [25]. Early
detection of transmissible disease could be helpful to avoid
the huge financial losses in the animal agriculture industry.
The wearable sensors can also be used to identify the activ-
ity, position and social behaviour of the animals, which can
be used for the growth development and better environ-
ment [26].
 A. Nadeem et al. / Computer Networks 83 (2015) 363–380
In [27] authors designed an ambulatory instrument
based on predictive model for disease detection in cattle
while observing the physiological and behavioural changes.
The design of this instrument is based on the wearable sen-
sors, electronic identification circuit and movement obser-
vation device. The author uses several behavioural and
physiological vital signs measure the health of the cattle
like core body temperature, heart rate, respiratory rate,
ambient temperature, humidity, wind pattern and its beha-
vioural factor like feed and water intake. The authors, as a
team, fixed the instrument containing different wearable
sensors in the belt worn by cattle. The author integrates
the Radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags use for iden-
tification of the cattle, accelerometer and GPS for monitor-
ing the cattle movement in this instrument. The Microchip
PIC18F8720™ microcontroller performs the on-board pro-
cessing of these sensors and electronic equipments. The
sensed data from wearable sensors are processed and
stored using the microcontroller. The communication mode
transfers data using the Bluetooth module. On detection of
nearest Bluetooth access point, the microcontroller trans-
mits these stored data wirelessly to the server for analysis.
The author used checksum method to check the wireless
data integrity.
3.2. Disability assistance using BASN
A BASN comprises of different tiny sensor nodes,
deployed on human body for sensing important measure
such as temperature, and blood pressure [31]. These sen-
sors are capable of performing some computation, storing
small amount of data and transmit sensed data to the sink
or to a desired destination.
BASN has used for disability assistance in many ways,
such as activity monitoring, posture detection, way finding
for blind/deaf-blind person and support aging in place. In
most cases, a BASN for disability assistance lies in passive
assistive device category because generally it was used
for monitoring the condition or current state of disabled
persons without any interaction with them. However, in
some cases, BASN can work actively and fall into active
assistive technology device category.
In this section, we review research work from the litera-
ture regarding the application of BASN in disability sup-
port. BASN has implemented for assisting disability as
per following category:
1. BASN for rehabilitation
2. BASN for activity monitoring (real-time)
3. BASN for posture detection
4. BASN for way-finding for blind/deaf-blind person
5. BASN for support for elderly person
3.2.1. BASN for rehabilitation
Rehabilitation is a dynamic process for the patients that
have suffered a stroke, joint replacement/reconstruction
surgery, amputation or any motor functional disability
caused by Parkinson disease. Specialized medical operator
helps patients for restoration of functional capabilities
to normal state for which medical operators required
to monitor and control the rehabilitation process. A
367
traditional system for monitoring the patients comprises
of markers which patient wears on different body parts
and a camera that records the movement of patients.
These systems are complex, expensive and formation of
the system, i.e. markers and cameras are required each
time a patient visit to a rehabilitation centre.
The BASN helps both patients and medical persons in
term of the feature of remotely supervising and monitoring
patient’s recovery and rehabilitation process. Continuous
monitoring in the patient’s natural environment greatly
reduces the burden over the medical centre as patients
are not required to visit regularly. Further, it is less expen-
sive and unobtrusive as patients are not required to tether
with the system.
A rehabilitation and recovery monitoring system proto-
type proposed, evaluated and some experimental results
are presented in [28]. The system consists of IRIS motes
(transceiver modules from Crossbow™) which are placed
on the wrist and upper part of right arm. Both IRIS motes
are connected to a sink node placed in centre of front waist.
Sink node is working as a gateway for BASN and connected
to PC. A RS.
SI (Received Signal Strength Indicator) based algorithm
using SVM (Support Vector Machine) was applied to deter-
mine and classify the arm movement. Some rehabilitation
exercises which author named as Activity 1, Activity 2
and Activity 3 were carried out by subject. Results pre-
sented in the paper showed good detection performance
of movement.
RehabSPOT, a rehabilitation and recovery monitoring
system for stroke and other physical dysfunction, is pro-
posed in [29]. RehabSPOT is a 3-tier architecture system;
in tier-1 kinetic sensor equipped with Sun SPOT free-
Range node forming BASN by a wireless mesh network
between sensor nodes using IEEE 802.15.4, Sun SPOT base
station connected to a PC over a wired network in tier-2
and PC is connected to a central server over the internet
is in tier-3. Sensor nodes are capable of monitoring differ-
ent physical behaviour of patients, such as body move-
ment, joint bending, and gait analysis.
Accurate patient evaluation, reassessment time identifi-
cation, and patient group’s identification are issues faced in
management of Low Back Pain patients. A multi-sensor
wearable wireless system, IMPAIRED is proposed in [30]
for evaluation of the patients with low back pain. The
BASN topology proposed has been used in order to form
BASN using MicroStrainÒ Inertia-LinkÒ wireless inertial
sensors. The aim of the project is to monitor the patients’
degree of disability with low back pain, creating an inte-
grated device that helps long term monitoring of patients
in their natural environment, and usability of inertial sen-
sor and their suitable placement of human body of patient
with LBP.
Patients with hip replacement surgery have a risk of
dislocating the hip after surgery. Therefore, they need to
control their movement, avoid exerting the force on the
operated leg, and observe the direction of the surgeon dur-
ing the recovery period. Using inertial sensors (3-axis
accelerometer and 3-axis magnetic sensor) HipGuard sys-
tem is proposed in [32] to help patients measure the force
they are exerting on the operated leg, monitoring the
368 A. Nadeem et al. / Computer Networks 83 (2015) 363–380
movement, such as leg and hip position and rotation, thus
preventing the risk of dislocation of joints in a home
environment. Seven sensors are integrated into trousers,
worn by patients to monitor its activities, generate alarms
when an abnormal posture is detected or excess force is
measured on the operated leg. These sensors are connected
to control device using ANT radio link while the control
unit is connected to PC using Bluetooth. The system
requires 10 s of training during which patient should stand
still so that the system creates a reference point for future
movement recognition.
3.2.2. BASN for real time activity monitoring
A wearable BASN system can also be used to support
rehabilitation of patients with motor impairment. This also
support for motor impairment training in healthcare and
for exercise instruction of an elderly person. For evaluation
of patients with motor impairment, therapist instructs the
patient to perform special activities, watch movement
style, measure the time in performing a task, and counting
the number of steps, in which therapist require qualitative
measurement of movement. Author proposed a system in
[33] for measurement of gait analysis parameters using
inertial sensor placing on the body.
3.2.3. BASN for posture detection
Accelerometer with wireless networking capability are
widely used for capturing the posture of humans specially
fall detection in elderly people. Using inertial sensors, inte-
grated in the jacket on the upper part of trunk a novel algo-
rithm is proposed in [34], for fall detection for the people
who undertake physical activities in extreme and severe
conditions such as fire fighters and civil protection appara-
tus. The proposed novel algorithm mitigates the effects of
jumping or running, a normal routine during firefighting
during which accelerometer affects same as in the condi-
tion of fall, resulting in false detection of fall. This algo-
rithm reduced the effects of false alarm significantly.
3.2.4. BASN for way finding
A blind person can easily move in its familiar environ-
ment like home, school or workplace. However, there is a
problem for them when these persons go to a new place,
such as students enrolled in a new school or a person
moves to a new workplace. An RFID based information grid
is proposed in [35] using passive, low-cost, high frequency
operated RFID tags embedded in floors. RFID tags receive
and store location information. The RFID reader is inte-
grated in the walking cane or in the shoe of blind persons.
The RFID reader reads the location information from the
encounter tag and then transfers the information to the
users’ PDA. In this way, a blind person can easily move into
the new and unknown location.
3.2.5. BASN for support for elderly persons
Abnormal falls are a general cause of disability in older
persons and this fall can become life threatening.
Researchers proposed several techniques to provide sup-
port to elderly persons living alone, such as fall detection
carpet or systems consisting of cameras that records the
activities of elderly people and detects any abnormal
condition using computer vision techniques. However,
these systems are expensive and do not provide full cover-
age of the living place. A body area sensor network consist-
ing of inertial and biosensors can greatly help in providing
support for elderly people living a safer life.
Abnormal Condition Detection system has been pro-
posed in [36] for supporting elderly people living alone
in their living place such as home. It uses ‘‘Wireless Bio
Sensor Evaluation Kit’’ which was developed by the
Medical Electronic Science Institute (MESI). They devel-
oped a system that detects object’s activities such as sit-
ting, walking, lying and falling. They evaluated their
system and reported a 90.91% accuracy of fall detection.
Parkinson disease is a common neurodegenerative dis-
ease, affecting 3% of the population of the age above
65 years. It is a disorder of the brain, leading to tremor
(shaking), slowness in movement and in walking and
coordination. For evaluation of the person with Parkinson
disease, a system is proposed in [37]. The system consists
of a body area sensor network formed by SHIMMER
biosensor. Intel Digital Health Group’s develops these sen-
sors. SHIMMER is capable of sensing movement in 3-axis
using tri-axial accelerometers. It records, process data
and sends the process data wirelessly to the base station.
For clinical assessment, patient movement, such as; quiet
sitting, finger tapping, alternating hand movements, heel
tapping, and walking was recorded and processed for
evaluation.
A fall detection system for older people is proposed in
[38]. The system is comprised of tri-axial accelerometer
and tri-axis gyroscope. The authors proposed algorithm
that significantly differentiates the ADL (activities of daily
living) and in actual fall. Author use SVM (signal vector
magnitude) to differentiate ADL, such as sitting, standing,
running, climbing stairs, and laying. The experimental
results show 100% measure of specificity without any inac-
curacy and measured sensitivity of 81.6%.
Another fall and accident detection system is proposed
in [39]. The sensors used in proposed architecture are an
accelerometer, a gyroscope and a magnetometer. The sen-
sors are placed on the upper torso, on the hip and on one of
the user’s legs. The preliminary results show 85.6% accu-
racy of fall detection in normal fall. The authors proposed
to investigate the detection of hampered fall detection as
future plan.
3.3. Human activity monitoring
Activity recognition may provide benefits in many
areas. With the development of miniature sensors for vari-
ous applications, it is now possible to create a BASN, which
can help in the recognition of human activities. The body
area sensor network is used to monitor human activities
in the following situations:
1. Emergency Situation (firefighters, volunteers, rescuer,
etc.)
2. Remote Monitoring (staff, kids, elderly, etc.)
3. Training (interactive dance, stage performance, etc.)
4. Security (soldiers)
5. Safety (personal safety, elderly, etc.)
 A. Nadeem et al. / Computer Networks 83 (2015) 363–380
Researchers have used BASN to recognize body postures
and monitor activities such as standing, walking, running,
lying for example, in [40] authors used BASN, consisting of
four sensor nodes, for human activity recognition. Keeping
in view that RSSI can be used to detect the position of
unknown object the authors described indoor localization
method through the use of RSSI. Their method calculates
the position of target node through measuring the distance,
and the distance is measured using RSSI values as input to
Extended Kalman Filter. The authors’ evaluation is based
on HMM (Hidden Markov Model), using BAUM-Welch algo-
rithm (used to find unknown parameters of HMM) to train
the system and Vitebi algorithm (a dynamic programming
algorithm used to find the most likely sequence of hidden
states) to identify the activity series. Forwards backward
algorithm (an algorithm to compute the posterior margin
of all hidden state variables given a sequence of observa-
tions) is used for determining the probability of particular
output signals. Author recognized altogether nine postures,
including standing, walking, running and transition from
one posture to another. Additionally, the authors suggested
that the same technique can be used for fire fighters.
In [41], the authors proposed a prototype of ambulatory
(relating to or adapted for walking) monitoring of human
activity using wireless sensor system. They concluded that
the prescribed work can be used for monitoring other
physiological parameters such as heart or muscle activity.
The proposed BASN consists of three acts sensor platform
in which two of the sensors are placed on the ankles for
ambulatory monitoring and one is placed on upper body
tilt to monitor ECG activity. They investigate user
physiological state using an on-board bio-amplifier, which
is implemented on the ISPM board. They passed the signal
output of the EMG and ECG to two microcontrollers, one
for local microcontrollers and the other for Telosboard (a
type of sensor platform). The AcitS platform was used for
the monitoring of steps and to measure stride at the time
of walking or running. The authors conclude that the same
technology can be used to measure activities in various
computer assisted physical rehabilitation applications.
Sitting, sitting-reclining, lying-down, standing, walking,
jogging, and other physical activities are recognized in
[42]. The authors used HMM and multimodal sensing para-
digms to recognize postures. They claimed that the detec-
tion of these postures is not possible using the traditional
accelerometer based approaches. They proposed relative
sensor proximity and sensor orientation as two new
modalities. The authors used RSSI values of the RF signal
to find the relative proximity. Activity-intensive and non-
intensive body postures, such as sitting, standing; walking
and running are recognized by the work proposed in [43].
They used proximity sensors based solution for the detec-
tion of sitting and standing postures. The accelerometer is
used for detecting postures of walking and running. Some
posture detection needs fine details of positions like stand-
ing, sitting, and lying down. Low activity postures recogni-
tion is performed using radio frequency based proximity
sensing and by applying HMM.
In [44] authors used RSSI (Received Signal Strength
indicator) values of nodes in order to find the location of
369
firefighters working in the field. Their location tracking
scheme will locate the firefighter and also monitor the dif-
ferent vital parameter such as CO (Carbon monoxide) and
HCN (Hydrogen Cyanide) in the environment and send
the information to fire chief which make enable him to
take appropriate decision about the health of his valued
firefighter. They simulated the proposed system using a
renowned simulator QualNet™ and also mimic the situa-
tion in an environment to test the results. Seven sensor
nodes are used in the simulation and in the actual environ-
ment setup. Their implementation exploits the idea of
MANET (mobile adhoc network) to create a network on
the fly, enabling firefighters to join and/or leave the net-
work at any time.
Authors in [45] proposed a routing mechanism to mea-
sure the fatigue level of soldiers using BASN. If the fatigue
level of soldiers is known then it can help to send back up
in order to smooth running of the ongoing operations.
Temperature, heartbeat, and blood glucose sensor are used
to measure the fatigue level of soldiers. In this work sen-
sors monitor the increase in body temperature and heart-
beat, and decrease in blood glucose level, while
performing activities such as walking, slow running and
fast running, as an input to BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate).
BMR takes as parameter to measure fatigue level. BS
(Station) is placed on the wrist of the soldier and receives
the data from all three sensor nodes. Threshold limits of
temperature, heartbeat, and blood glucose has been set
as obvious simulation parameter and if the values of these
parameters cross the threshold limits then the transmitter
in each sensor sends data to BS. BS takes decisions on the
received data and measure the fatigue level and if fatigue
level is observed BS informs headquarter for taking future
decision.
BASN has also been employed be the researcher to
monitor soldiers. For example, in [46] the authors pro-
posed to recognize four postures for soldiers’ tele-monitor-
ing. They used accelerometer and relative proximity for the
detection of postures of soldiers. In [47] authors proposed
a complete implementation of different posture recogni-
tion. They prepared a wireless node named WiMoCa and
recognized seven different postures through three
accelerometer nodes. All three nodes are placed as the end-
points of a star network topology for sensing and acquiring
data. WiMoCa nodes monitor the inclination of certain
parts of the body and average these sensed date with
respect to gravity. In [48] authors described a complete
system in which soldiers wear body sensors to measure
ECG signals, accelerometer, SpO2 and also a transceiver
for communicating with other soldiers. They presented
their work in a warlike situation in which a group of sol-
diers exposed to a bomb blast in a large area having no net-
work infrastructure. To calculate the blast impact
assessment authors present a blast source localization
algorithm which calculates the blast location through the
acceleration experienced by soldiers’ body.
BASN can also be implemented in emergency situations
to monitor activities of firefighters, rescue workers and
volunteer. For example, in [49] authors observe the
dehydration level of firefighters and other rescuers
370 A. Nadeem et al. / Computer Networks 83 (2015) 363–380
through Ionic Selective Electrodes (ISE) sensors on their
worn fabric. This work is a part of ProeTEX project.
ProeTEX is a project, which aims to develop a product for
emergency operators such as firefighters and rescuers.
One of the earliest works of ProeTEX presented in [50] is
the development of a smart uniform for Civil Protection’s
requirement and for firefighters. They placed sensors and
electrodes in the inner and outer garments of the person.
Inner garment sensors are used to measure physiological
parameters like heart rate, breathing rate and temperature
of the body. The outer garment is equipped with one
thermocouple to sense environmental temperature and
two tri-axial accelerometers to observe the movement
(user activity and fall detection) of the person. GPS on
the uniform is used to localization of information if the
user is supposed to move into a large area. The data gath-
ered from sensors are sent to a textile antenna, which has
an RF module and is capable of sending information to a
monitoring station as well as other operators. In [51] as
part of the project ProeTEX, the authors proposed develop-
ment of two sets of sensor-based garments. The first gar-
ment is for civil protection rescuers and the other for fire
fighters. Sensors are placed in outer garment, inner gar-
ment and a pair of boots. Sensors in inner garments sense
cardiopulmonary parameters and temperature. One
detachable band is also a part of inner garment that con-
tains all electronic modules. Sensors on outer garment
can detect environmental temperature and concentration
of carbon monoxide (CO) in the environment. Posture
and activity, including the possible fall of a person are
detected using two accelerometers, and in order to prevent
possible burning of the person, one more sensor is attached
in outer garment that measure the heat flux passing
through the thermal insulation layer of the person’s jacket.
A prototype application for remotely monitoring the
condition of fire fighters in hostile environments is pro-
posed in [52]. They deployed five sensors for the monitor-
ing of the person. All sensors sense and directly sends data
to sink node. The sink node is not a sensor, but it is a por-
table computer, which interacts with all sensor nodes to
monitor the state of firefighter. The states which are recog-
nized include running, walking, weaving the arm, standing,
and lying. Temperature, humidity, and position of the
object are sensed periodically through the sensor worn
on the chest. Four wearable sensors detect the movements
of the firefighter. In author’s point of view, the combina-
tion of all these sensed data can be used to estimate the
fatigue level or comfort level of the firefighters.
BASN has also been used to monitor physical activity of
elder persons. For example, fall detection and heart rate are
monitored in [53] through a wearable device wear on the
chest of the person consisting of a tri-axial accelerometer,
a two-axis gyroscope and a heartbeat detection circuit. The
wearable device detects and sends signals using ZigBee.
The system can send signals in case of alarming situations
to health care personals or care givers. To identify fall and
physical activities three machine learning methods, (i)
Naive Bayes, (ii) Support Vector and (iii) Ripple down rule
learner were used in this system. In another example, in
[54] authors observed physical activities of the human
body by implementing BASN. They used motion and
temperature sensor to monitor individuals. The data gath-
ered from these sensors can also be utilized for fall detec-
tion of the person and temperature sensors can be used to
sense person’s temperature.
3.4. BASN applications in sports
Technology changes many aspects of our lives. The
adoption and use of technology can also impact sports field
where advancements have been seen in materials, equip-
ment design, clothing and portable electronics.
The development of tiny sensors brings revolution in
many fields. Miniature sensors are being used in many
applications including professional sports. BASN has
already been used to assist sports persons for different pur-
pose. Sports persons use BASN in sports in following four
domains:
 Training
 Monitoring
 Self-assessment
 Performance Enhancement
3.4.1. BASN for training sports persons
Training allows a sports person to enhance perfor-
mance. It signifies the process of preparation for some task.
Mostly this process extends to a number of days and even
months and years depends upon the progress of candi-
dates. The technologies play a vital role in the training of
sportsman. Small sensors are attached to the body of the
sports person during training to observe the performance
level of that person.
Sports’ training represents the adaptation of the certain
exercises that can result in an improvement in his overall
performance. Therefore, researchers are contributing to
the development of sports specific coaching system.
These systems consist of a framework which are capable
of acquiring and processing the physiological and beha-
vioural variables for a given sport. The athletes of any
sports can improve their quality of training from feedback
systems. In [55] a golf training system using BASN is pre-
sented. This system incorporates wearable motion sensors
to get initial information and provide a feedback on the
quality of movements. To capture the unique movement
of the golf swing, sensors are placed on a golf club and at
a certain position on an athlete’s body such as wrist and
arms. The proposed system can work as a quantitative
model, which apply signal-processing techniques on the
collected data and measures the correctness of the per-
formed actions. The authors evaluate the effectiveness of
the proposed framework using four major segments of
the golf swing: takeaway, backswing, downswing and fol-
low-through. The result shows that the suggested model
is useful in improving the quality of the golf swing of a
player with respect to the angle of the wrist rotation.
The dart is one of the sports in which the participant
throws an object. In a game of dart, accuracy and repeata-
bility are the key elements. The position a dart will hit the
target depends upon the various factors including position,
direction and speed of the motion at the point of release.
The authors in [56] proposed a mechanism to identify
 A. Nadeem et al. / Computer Networks 83 (2015) 363–380
the contributing factors for the lateral drift or landing
errors in the horizontal plane. For this purpose, they used
BASN by wireless inertial measurement devices to capture
tilt, force and timings. An optical 3D motion capture sys-
tem provides a complete kinematic model of the subject
to monitor muscle activation patterns and a force plate
and pressure mat to capture tactile pressure and force
measurements. This work introduces the concept of con-
stants throwing rhythm in the dart. It highlights how land-
ing errors in the horizontal plane cause variations in arm
force, speed, centre of gravity and other movements of
the body. In addition, it could also monitor the fatigue level
of the player.
3.4.2. BASN for monitoring sports persons
Monitoring of athletes in real time is useful to maxi-
mize the performance while preventing injuries. It is also
helpful in different applications like provision of referee-
assistance and assist television broadcast. Due to the lim-
ited wireless range of worn sensors (BASN), it is difficult
to take the physiological data of athlete in real time and it
needs multi-hop routing mechanism to implement such
type of system. In [57] the authors proposed a model that
can produce synthetic dynamic topologies using stochas-
tic attributes. The model is useful in simulating the per-
formance of different routing strategies for monitoring
soccer player’s movements during a game. It also allows
the key parameters such as link auto and cross-cor-
relation to study their impact on routing performance.
This model is very helpful in understanding and mod-
elling the dynamic topologies related to the sports moni-
toring and allows designing dynamic topologies for such
environments.
The extraction of data in real time from the sensors is
difficult due to the small battery and short wireless range,
particularly in a sport with a large play area. In [58], a
BASN is deployed for monitoring the soccer player’s activ-
ity. In this BASN experimental setup shown in Fig. 2, each
player wears the MicaZ mote mounted armband on the
Fig. 2. The experimental setup used by authors in [58].
371
right arm, which sends a hello packet after every second
time interval with individual slotted time lines. The
authors initially reviewed the two existing routing
schemes, i.e. a random forwarding scheme and two-copy
routing scheme. Later on, while analysing the existing pro-
tocols on the soccer field, the authors introduced their own
routing protocol called ‘‘tunable flooding scheme’’.
The features of the proposed routing schemes are repli-
cated at the source, replication at intermediate nodes and
data freshness. Analysis of the results shows low resource
and minimum delay compared to the previous routing
schemes.
It is observed that the muscle fatigue is the main cause
of a player’s performance degradation. Fatigue level of
player is continuously changing parameters during play
due to tiring activities like running and sprinting. So there
is a need of a mechanism which continuously monitors
each player in the team during a match and in the case
of the occurrence of any critical situation, immediate pre-
cautionary measures should be taken to reduce the chance
of any further injury. The fatigue level can be measured by
sensing the accumulation of lactic acid in muscle. In [59]
authors proposed a protocol Threshold based Energy-effi-
cient Fatigue Measurement (THE-FAME) for soccer player
using BASN. To achieve minimum delay and less energy
consumption direct transmission is used to send data to
the base station by using multiple sinks along the border
of the ground. It uses a composite parameter, which con-
sists of threshold parameter for lactic acid accumulation
and distance covered by the player. When any value of a
composite parameter goes beyond the defined threshold
value the players are declared to be in fatigue state.
MATLAB is used to perform the simulation of the proposed
protocol. The result shows the effectiveness of the THE-
FAME in terms of energy and delay as compared to the pre-
vious multi-hop routing protocol.
In [60], the authors used a BASN to determine player
physical state during the match and presented a wireless
sensor network that allows the interconnection between
372 A. Nadeem et al. / Computer Networks 83 (2015) 363–380
the BASN that are placed on each soccer player. In the
90 min soccer match, the player gets tired depending upon
the dynamics of the soccer game. BASN helps the coach to
monitor the match remotely and identify the exhausted
player. In the proposed model, each player has BASN and
also acts as a sensor node in the network to sense and
transmit data. The data will be routed from a mobile source
to a fixed sink located outside the game field. In order to
get faster updates, the information routes through the
players of both the teams, but decrypted by the players
of the same team.
A number of research works have focused on capturing
and analysing the biometric and physiological signals, but
these researches have been limited to a laboratory or some
controlled environment. Sensory integration with textile
industry is playing a vital role in the advancement of wear-
able sensor technology. However, there are a number of
problems in the development of truly wearable monitoring
technology (WMT). In [61], the authors reviewed the gen-
eric monitoring system architectures for sports person.
They proposed that a monitoring system which could be
split into three phases: sensing, processing and transmit-
ting. They have also presented the custom implementation
of commercially available component and evaluation
board used for monitoring. In [62] authors presented a
simple BASN platform, a mechanism to collect data in a
real time environment and monitor the performance of
the marathon athlete in a dense and highly dynamic
environment. The collection of data during the event helps
them to know the behaviour of the radio transmissions
between different links in the network.
Unlike [62] where they obtain the speed and energy
expenditure from a body-mounted accelerometer, in [63]
authors studied the problem associated with GPS based
activity monitoring. They have conducted a study in which
sensor nodes, equipped with GPS and accelerometer, are
deployed on a group of professional players. The GPS is
used to obtain the time and distance measurement. The
accelerometer provides accurate information about the
players’ speed by measuring the stride frequency. Stride
frequency was compared to speed obtained from the GPS.
The results showed that there is a linear relationship
between the speed and the stride frequency of the athlete
with respect to the ground.
Sweating occurs due to thermoregulation in a body.
During physical exertion, sweating rate increases in order
to avoid a dangerous rise in temperature caused by the
increase in metabolic rate. Sweat fluid includes sodium
chloride, potassium, urea, lactate, bicarbonate, calcium,
ammonia, organic compound and non-organic compound.
Swot analysis plays an important role in a person’s well-
being. The techniques for the analysis of sweat is quiet dif-
ficult. In [64] a textile-based sensor to provide real time
information regarding sweat pH and sweat rate is intro-
duced. The objective of this work was to create a system
that integrates easily into a fabric. A pH sensitive dye is
placed inside the fabric fluidic system, which determines
sweat pH. The sweat activity detects textile substrate. All
these sensors are integrated into a waistband and are con-
trolled by a central unit with wireless connectivity. These
sensors provide valuable physiological information.
A sweat analysis is useful in sports and health domain.
It gives the information about the change in molecules and
ions due to the pathological disorder. The composition of
sweat can also change during exercise due to dehydration.
The loss of water in the body causes, symptoms, irritability,
headache, dizziness, cramps, vomiting, increased body
temperature and heart rate, increased perceived work rate,
reduced mental function, slow gastric emptying. The per-
formance of the athlete decreases due to 2% drop in body
weight caused by dehydration [65]. In [65] the authors
described the development and testing procedure of a fluid
handling using BASN for the real-time analysis of sweat pH
and sodium level during the exercise. The optical detection
system is used to record pH induced chemical changes,
which is displayed with the help of a sensor. They test
the device under the control conditions and it manages
to detect the increments of 0.2 pH units.
Today the blind and visually impaired people have
improved the quality of their life, sociality and confidence
by using different assistive technologies. They use differ-
ent types of walking assisted system, which are equipped
with different types of advanced technologies. However,
enjoying sports is still a difficult task for them because
sports require the use of many visual senses. Currently
only trained blind people can enjoy the sports.
Therefore, there is a need for the development of sports
assistance system for blind or visually impaired persons.
In [66], the authors proposed an indoor positioning sys-
tem, which will assist blind or visually impaired persons
to determine moving objects. This system assists the
blind or visually impaired persons in playing sports.
This system uses three technologies: a BASN, an indoor
positioning system and a wireless sensor networks. It
consists of wireless heart rate monitor, wireless sensor
network and four ultrasound satellite modules. The heart
rate monitor worn on the wrist, ultrasound and RF trans-
mitters worn on the head and ultrasound satellite mod-
ules on the ceiling. The ultrasound and wireless sensor
networks are used to detect an opponent’s position and
forward this information to a blind person or visually
impaired person through the vibration belt which is worn
by them during sports. This information helps them in
playing and enjoying sports more easily.
3.4.3. BASN for self-assessment of sports persons
Self-assessment in sports means that athletes analyse
their performance on some standardized form. In [67] a
novel mobility model is proposed to name DynaMo.
DynaMo is capable of modelling the mobility pattern of
both an individual and a group. Dynamo is used to model
the mobility pattern of players during the soccer match.
It has the ability to preserve the relative position while
allowing free movement of players, which is not available
in the previous models such as RPGM. The results of the
mobility patterns compared with the existing solution to
seeing their resemblance to the expected trajectories of
players during a match. To generate a realistic pattern
the proposed model represents the movement of players
in an application scenario, where each player during a
match uses wearable sensors. These sensors collect and
transfer sensed data to sink by means of inter-BASN multi
 A. Nadeem et al. / Computer Networks 83 (2015) 363–380
hop routing. The impact of mobility on network perfor-
mance is analysed in terms of throughput and delay.
In Baseball, players push their bodies to the extreme
level especially pitchers. The survey report shows that
90% pitchers reported shoulders or elbow pain, which
makes throwing difficult. Therefore, a system that moni-
tors players, measure changes in playing techniques and
indicates or predicts injury will be valuable. In [68] authors
proposed a BASN that calculates force, torque and other
features during extreme physical activity in a baseball
game. The system uses inertial measurement units worn
on various segments of the athlete’s body to measure the
dynamic accuracy. Low and high range sensors are used
to sense the slow and fast motion of the athletes with
the addition of the compass which helps in tracking the
joint angles.
3.4.4. BASN for performance enhancement of sports persons
The key phases involve in improving the performance of
a player in professional sports are task definition, training
and performance assessment. The training could result in
the redefinition of task with the help of the results
obtained from performance measurement. The dart is a
sport where accuracy and repeatability are the key ele-
ments for performance. In [69], the authors work on the
biomechanical analysis of precision targeted throwing in
competitive and recreational dart by using body area sen-
sor network of wireless inertial measurement devices. The
Wireless Inertial Measurement Unit (WIMU) is used to
measure speed, acceleration and throwing timing. The
measurement system was validated by employing a vicon
3D motion capture system to benchmark results obtained
using the WIMU solution with a ‘gold standard’ optical
inertial measurement system.
In [70] the authors proposed the method of determining
the performance of the cyclist in the real time. The system
consists of BASN consisting of motion sensor nodes that
can collaboratively process the information and give
immediate feedback to the cyclists. The designed portable
wireless is used for monitoring of lower limb kinematics
during cycling. To assess the cycling technique the mea-
surements of the knee and joint angles have been consid-
ered. They compare the obtained results with the gold
standard camera-based system, which is widely used for
the same purpose.
3.5. Other use of BASN
Body area sensor networks can also be implemented in
entertainment, especially in gaming. For example, in [71]
the authors developed a multi stream cyber physical video
game and used four sensor nodes on human body to cap-
ture motion. Each sensor node autonomously collects data
and directly sends to the sink node. The sink node, then
sends the data to Cyber-physical Game Controller. Four
game engines are used to get data from Cyber-Physical
Game Controller. Four game engines are used for cameras
for each direction (east, west, north, and south) and provide
a better visual effect to the player as a game scene. These
sensor nodes are equipped with some inertial sensors, tri-
axial accelerometer and tri-axial electronic compass, a
373
microcontroller and a wireless module. The accelerometer
is used to sense the gravity and compass senses the mag-
netic force in 3 standard dimensions. Cyber-physical
Game Controller works as a converter, which converts data
gathered from sink node to game input and dispatches each
game input for each of the four engines.
Mental stress is detected by authors in [72] using multi-
modal sensing in a BASN. Two biosensors are employed to
collect emotional data from 20 participants. Participants
were made to sit in front of emotional pictures and then
their emotional stress is detected using different MLA
(machine learning algorithms).
4. Analysis of BASN applications
A body area sensor network is found to be a very useful
technology in terms of monitoring different physical
parameters of human not only for healthcare, but can also
for assisting disabled/elder population, and for assessment
and analysis of sports personals. Some other application
area where BASN plays a dynamic role is entertainment
and gaming, mood analysis, remote monitoring, safety
and security of fire fighters and security personals.
The tremendous advantage that a BASN offers is
optimizing the ubiquitous computing, where sensor nodes
seamlessly integrate with humans and has the capability of
communicating with other devices and application servers.
This results in less human interaction with computer. As
technology becomes more advanced, the capabilities of
sensor nodes, i.e. sensing, processing and storage are also
enhanced whereas the requirement of power consumption
of the nodes is decreased. The trend of increase in capabil-
ity and decrease in power consumption offers the
researchers to explore new and versatile applications of
BASN in human life.
We have performed an in depth review and analysis of
Section 3 of BASN applications in various walks of life. On
the basis of this analysis, we have classified BASN applica-
tions in four major domains as shown in Fig. 3. These main
areas are further divided into sub-domains, each playing
an important role in human life. Any other application of
BASN which could not fit into the first four categories is
included in the ‘‘others’’ category.
4.1. Comparison and analysis of BASN applications
We now compare the existing work from literature on
various BASN applications described above in Table 1. We
first analysed proposed applications of BASN based on
the parameters such as application sub-domain, type of
sensors used, routing or data aggregation techniques and
the wireless technology. For clarity in Table 1, we have fur-
ther divided our reviews in sections based on the sub-
domain of BASN applications classified in Fig. 3 such as
general healthcare, and animal healthcare. We have also
indicated the major contribution of the proposed applica-
tion of BASN in Table 1 and show the comparison of most
of BASN application specific proposals discussed in this
paper. On some of the key observations, our reviews in this
paper are highlighted below.
374 A. Nadeem et al. / Computer Networks 83 (2015) 363–380
HEALTH
CARE
GENERAL ANIMAL
Support Elder
HEALTH CARE HEALTH CARE
Persons
WAY FINDING
NEONATAL
BLIND AND REHABILITATION
HEALTH CARE
DEAF BLIND
 We can see from Table 1 that most of the BASN applica-
tion reviews, for example [28,30,32,33,43,68,69] have
utilized inertial sensors that can measure acceleration,
tilt, rotation, vibration and various degrees of motions.
This is because most applications of BASN such as
rehabilitations, activity monitoring, and posture detec-
tion. Require inertial sensors.
 It is obvious from Table 1 that the majority of the BASN
applications has not considered the routing protocol to
optimize the data dissemination; we believe this is
because of the use of reduced function sensor devices.
Most of the applications, reviews in this paper such as
[12,15,18–21] have not implemented the network layer
operations of data aggregation/routing as most of these
applications use single hope architecture of BASN (i.e.
All the sensor nodes are directly connected to the sink
device). This is the reason we have indicated ‘‘Not
Considered’’ in Routing/Data Aggregation technique col-
umn of Table 1. With the development of fully functional
sensor devices in future, we believe that the data aggre-
gation and routing techniques for BASN could further
enhance the performance of the BASN in major applica-
tions in terms of energy consumption and Quality of
Service. However, some researchers have proposed rout-
ing mechanism for their applications such as [57,58].
 Test beds are used mostly to implement the ideas and
few researchers have considered simulations, this is
because very few simulators supports BASN protocols
are available such as Castalia (a package used with
OMNET++) or NS-click – an extension of the NS sim-
ulator platform. Finally, we believe sensor nodes must
be capable of performing multiple sensing tasks so that
the number of nodes deployed on the body can be
reduced.
5. Novel BASN applications proposals
In the previous section we have reviewed the existing
application of BASN. In this section we will suggest novel
application scenarios, where BASN could be deployed in
the future.
APPLICATIONS SPECIFIC
CLASSIFICATION OF BASN
HUMAN
DISABILITY
SPORTS ACTIVITY
ASSISTANCE
MONITORING
MONITORING
MONITORING
ACTIVITY SELF- FIRE OTHERS
TRAINING SOLDIERS
MONITORING ASSESSMENT FIGHTERS
ACTIVITIES
ACTIVITIES
MONITORING
PERFORMANCE
MONITORING EMPLOYEES
ENHANCEMENT
ACTIVITIES
POSTURE
DETECTION
Fig. 3. Application specific classification of BASN.
5.1. BASN to identify frostbites
People who spend significant time in very cold weather
(skiers, hikers, soldiers, ice skaters, outdoor workers, etc.)
may suffer from frostbite. Frostbite is a condition of skin
damage if the skin is exposed to temperatures below than
freezing point of skin. Toes, fingers, chin, cheeks, ears and
nose are the body parts which are affected most. It falls
in the category of cold related emergencies. A BASN can
be used to identify and inform about the frostbite condi-
tion of the person. In frostbite condition, the temperature
of the body decrease below zero degrees centigrade.
Temperature sensors can be placed on the parts of the
body which are highly expected to frostbite (the body parts
which are far from the heart and the parts which are
exposed) which will sense and relay temperature informa-
tion. This information could be analysed on the cell phone/
PDA for frostbite condition and can be used to provide an
alert to the susceptible.
5.2. BASN to assist blind swimmers
BASN can also be useful to assist blind or visually
impaired sportspersons such as swimming. A visually
impaired person cannot see when they are approaching a
wall at the end of the lap. One simple approach could be
to use human assistance. For example, human tappers stand
at both ends of the lane and taps the swimmer on the shoul-
der with a long rod when they approach the wall. There are
two types of solutions have been proposed [73] for a blind or
visually impaired swimmer to swim and practice indepen-
dently; (a) mechanical solution and (b) electronic solution.
The design of mechanical solution is very simple and
safe. A waterfall is created with the help of mechanical
pump under which the swimmers is passed. The mechani-
cal solution worked well, but it is expensive, difficult to
transport, hard to set up and cumbersome to operate. The
electronic solution consists of two base stations and one
receiver worn by the swimmer. The base stations create a
wireless boundary around themselves; they are placed on
the deck on either end of the lane above the water at a user
Table 1
Comparison of application specific proposals of BASN.

Author BASN application Type of sensor used Routing/data Wireless standard Major contribution Implementation
name aggregation
technique
Application domain: General healthcare
Habetha [12] MyHeart ECG, respiration, activity Not considered IEEE 802.15.4 Sensor embedded smart cloths for Test bed
monitoring Vital Body Signs
Tanaka et al. [15] Button System ECG, heart rate (HR), tri-axial accelerometer Not considered IEEE 802.15.4 Heart rate detection using fuzzy logic Test bed
and temperature sensors
Ismail and Cuneyt [18] Health Face Temperature, light, pressure, humidity and Not considered IEEE 802.15.4 & 802.11 Monitoring of physiological conditions Simulation
acceleration external heartbeat monitor and send to clinical systems
Zhang et al. [19] Compressed EEG Sensor Not considered Compressed the sensed data and de- Simulation
Sensing of EEG compress on desktop computers to
reduced nodes energy consumption
during monitoring of EEG

A. Nadeem et al. / Computer Networks 83 (2015) 363–380

Application domain: Neonatal healthcare
Bouwstra et al. [20] Smart Jacket ECG Not considered Wired Smart jacket for monitoring ECG of Test bed
Neonatal
Basak et al. [21] KiMS Temperature and pulse rate sensor Not considered IEEE 802.15.4 A system to monitor temperature, Simulation
pulse rate to assist children in cough,
sneeze
Application domain: Animal healthcare
Schoenig et al. [27] HealthCare Body temperature, heart rate, respiratory Not considered IEEE 802.15 & 802.15.4 Monitoring of physiological and Test bed
rate, ambient temperature, humidity behavioural changes in animal
sensors, wind pattern and its behavioural
factor like feed and water intake
Application domain: Rehabilitation
Guraliuc et al. [28] N/A IRIS transceiver modules from Crossbow™ Not considered IEEE 802.15.4 Calculate arm movement through RSSI Test bed
Zhang and Sawchuk RehabSPOT Inertial sensors Not considered IEEE 802.15.4 Remotely monitor the rehabilitation Test bed
[29] process in Stroke Patients
Chhikara et al. [30] IMPAIRED 3D accelerometer, 3D gyroscope, sEMG Not considered IEEE 802.15.4 Monitor movement of spine, pelvis and Test bed
sensors muscle fatigue to support patients
with low back pain
PekkaIso-Ketola et al. HipGuard Inertial (accelerometers, Magnetic sensor Not considered ANT Radio Link, Bluetooth Calculate Hip movement after Hip Test bed
[32] and gyroscope), Load sensor Surgery
Application domain: Activity monitoring
Watanabe and Saito N/A Accelerometer, Gyroscope Not considered Bluetooth A system to support motor Test bed
[33] rehabilitation of impaired patients
Application domain: Posture detection
Anania et al. [34] ProeTEX Project Triaxial Accelerometer Not considered Bluetooth Proposed algorithm for abnormal fall Test bed
detection
Application domain: Way finding
Willis and Helal [35] N/A RFID Reader, RFID Tags Not considered Bluetooth Provide support to blind persons for Test bed
navigation and way finding
Application domain: Supporting elder persons
Yazaki and Matsunaga ACDS Triaxial Accelerometer, ECG and Not considered Not Mentioned Remotely monitoring of abnormal Test bed
[36] Temperature Sensor conditions in elder persons
Patel et al. [37] N/A Triaxial Accelerometer, Triaxial Gyroscope Not considered IEEE 802.15.4 Activity monitoring elder person with Test bed

375
(continued on next page)
Table 1 (continued)

376
Author BASN application Type of sensor used Routing/data Wireless standard Major contribution Implementation
name aggregation
technique
Parkinson disease
Baek et al. [38] Fall Detection Triaxial Accelerometer, Triaxial Gyroscope Not considered IEEE 802.15.4 Fall detection in elder person Test bed
System
Felisberto et al. [39] Fall Detection Triaxial Accelerometer, Triaxial Gyroscope Not considered IEEE 802.15.4 Fall detection in elder person Test bed
System and magnetometer
Application domain: Fire fighter activity
Xu [40] Human Activity Dehydration sensor (electrochemical sensor) Not considered Not Mentioned Proposed a human activity monitoring Not Mentioned
Monitoring system for firefighters
Magenes et al. [51] Project ProeTEX Two-axial gyroscope, tri-axial ZigBee IEEE 802 Develop sensor based garments for Not Mentioned
accelerometer, heartbeat sensor activity monitoring, fall detection
Application domain: Posture and physical context detection
Quwaider and Biswas Physical context A two-axes piezoelectric accelerometer, RS232 protocol Not Mentioned Proposed a method to detect sitting, Not Mentioned

A. Nadeem et al. / Computer Networks 83 (2015) 363–380

[42] detection Mica2Dot mote radio nodes sitting-reclining, lying-down, standing,
postures using BASN
Quwaider and Biswas Human Activity Accelerometer and proximity sensor RS232 protocol Not Mentioned used HMM for activity detection Framework
[43] Monitoring
Ghosh et al. [44] N/A CO, HCN, and TelosB, Raspberry Pi (RP) Not mentioned Wi-Fi Location of fire-fighter determined Simulation
in the paper using RSSI using Quaint,
tested also
Javaid et al. [45] No name Temperature, heartbeat, and blood glucose They proposed Not mentioned in the paper An event driven routing protocol for Simulation
mentioned in the sensor their own measuring fatigue of a soldier is done on Mat lab
paper routing presented
mechanism
Farrell et al. [47] Human Activity Mimosa Node (with three accelerometers) Collision free Not Mentioned Proposed a method to recognition 7 Not Mentioned
Monitoring MAC protocol different body postures
Lim et al. [48] Monitoring Soldiers Accelerometer, Temperature, EEG, SpO2 Not Mentioned Not Mentioned Proposed a method to estimate the Not Mentioned
Activity sensors impact of blast and its effects on
soldiers in war
Application domain: Monitoring
Sivaraman et al. [57] Body area network MicaZ motes Multi-hop Mobile ad-hoc network Collected empirical data during Simulation
to collect the routing multiple games MATLAB
physiological data algorithms
of the athlete
Dhamdhere et al. [58] Monitor soccer MicaZ mote A tunable Wireless Proposed a routing protocol to monitor Test bed
players flooding scheme the activity of soccer players
Akram et al. [59] THE-FAME In-vivo sensor Not considered IEEE 802.15.4. It measures the fatigue level of the MATLAB
player during the match.
Application domain: Training
Ghasemzadeh [55] Golf Swing Training TelosB, motion sensor, accelerometer, Not considered Not Mentioned Proposed a golf training system MATLAB
gyroscope
Coyle [64] Sweat analysis Textile-based Sensors, Sweat rate Sensor, Not considered Wireless Training of Indoor cyclist in a room Test bed
humidity sensor, pH sensor, sweat (temperature 20°c, humidity 50%)
conductivity sensors
Morris [65] Analysis of sweat In-vitro and in vivo sensor Threshold Wireless Sweat analysis of sportsperson Test bed
pH and sodium detection/timer
levels routine
 A. Nadeem et al. / Computer Networks 83 (2015) 363–380 377

defined distance. On crossing the electronic boundary, it

vibrates to alert the blind swimmer. The electronic solution

Not Mentioned
worked with a limited success. It is directionally dependent

Simulation
Test bed

Test bed

MATLAB
and the receiver did not perform reliably.

TinyOs
We believe that a body area sensor network comprises
of wireless waterproof sensors capable of detecting the
motion of the person, can assist blind or visually impaired
Proposed indoor positioning system to

Proposed a method to analyze mental

and other features in a baseball game

swimmer.
Training & monitoring force, torque

Monitoring tilt, force and timing

5.3. BASN to assist diabetic patients

experiences provided to user

stress and emotion detected

A better realistic interaction
assist blind people in sports

There are several real-time monitoring systems that

have been proposed for monitoring the diabetic patient.
However, one of the shortcomings of research in this area
is the focus on alerting diabetic patients to stop eating
sweets when their glucose level is high or urge the patient
to eat sweets if the glucose level is low. A miniature taste
sensing system has proposed by various authors such as
in [74,75]. But we believe with the development of intelli-
gent implanted sensors for taste sensing and instant blood
Custom wireless protocol

IEEE 802.15.4 wireless

glucose monitoring a BASN system could then be built for

this purpose. This system will allow immediate alerts to a
person, its caregiver, or clinical staff when the sugar level is
Not Mentioned
IEEE 802.15.4

IEEE 802.15.4

above or below the thresholds. This will be very effective

Wireless

for the diabetic patients.

6. Conclusion
Not considered

Not considered

Not considered

Not considered

Not considered

Not considered

In the last few years BASN has evolved as a major appli-

cation area of wireless sensor networks and researchers
have proposed its application in various fields.
Researchers from academics and industries are continu-
ously exploring the potential of BASN in various walks of
life. The main focus of the researcher in BASN is to analyse
Electromyography (EMG), sensors, Texan
Inertial sensor, ADXL193 accelerometers,

parameters of sensor devices such as energy consumption,

Inertial sensors, triaxial accelerometer,

efficient MAC and Physical Layer Protocol [3–5,9],

optimization of on-node computation and data compres-
sion. However, limited research exists on exploring the
triaxial electronic compass

application of BASN in different areas of life. Therefore, in

pressure mapping sensor,

Biosensor (ECG and GSR)

this paper, we have tried to fill this gap and reviewed

ADRX300 gyroscopes

BASN proposals in the literature from the application point

Simulation OPNET

Vibration sensor

of view. We classify BASN existing applications in four

broad areas i.e. healthcare, disability assistance, sports
Biosensor

and human activity monitoring. For clarity of the work,

each broader area is further divided into its sub-domain
as shown in Fig. 3. In the review of an application specific
Application domain: Performance enhancement

Application domain: Monitoring mental stress

survey of BASN, it can be easily concluded that physiologi-

coach to monitor &
BASN to determine

Indoor Positioning

cal sensor in healthcare category and inertial sensors in the

A system to help

BASN for inertial

players in soccer
player physical

category of sports, rehabilitation and activity monitoring

measurement
identify tired

are playing vital role in various applications of BASN. In

Application domain: Assessment

analysis and comparing the main proposals through

devices
System

Others

Others
Sports

state

Application domain: Gaming

Table 1, we have highlighted a number of key similarities

and differences in existing applications of BASN. The prin-
cipal finding of the comparison is that most of existing
Aliberas and Wolisz

BASN applications are not considered network layer opera-

Lapinski et al. [68]

Garcia et al. [60]

Walsh et al. [69]

tions such as routing protocol or data aggregation tech-

nique in their implementation. We believe that the data
aggregation and routing techniques for BASN could further
Wu [71]
Lee [66]

[72]
ZigBee

enhance the performance of the BASN in major applica-

tions in terms of energy consumption and Quality of
Service. Another principal finding from the comparison
378 A. Nadeem et al. / Computer Networks 83 (2015) 363–380
and analysis of BASN application is that most of the appli-
cations implemented their research through test bed.
Simulation can reduce the cost and time incurred on prac-
tical implementation of BASN. Additionally, this survey
discovered that there are still some unexplored areas of life
where BASN applications can be used. We have highlighted
novel areas where BASN can be implemented in future.
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12 (1) (2012) 8–13.
Adnan Nadeem is an assistant professor and in
charge department of computer science,
Federal Urdu University of Arts, Science &
Technology, Pakistan. He is a fellow of Higher
Education Commission UK and a member of
IEEE & IEEE communication Society. He is a
Higher Education Commission approved PhD
supervisor. He has published his work in well
reputed international journals and confer-
ences. He has served as Technical Program
Committee chair for ICICTT 2013 and as a
reviewer for various international conferences
and journals. He received his PhD degree from the Faculty of Engineering
and Physical Sciences, Centre for Communication Systems Research (CCSR),
University of Surrey, UK. His principal research interest includes security
issues in wireless ad hoc networks, intrusion detection & prevention, secure
routing, quality of services, performance analysis in MANETs, Wireless
Sensor Networks, Body Area Sensor Networks and their applications.
380 A. Nadeem et al. / Computer Networks 83 (2015) 363–380
Muhammad Azhar Hussain is studying in the
PhD (CS) discipline of Federal Urdu University
of Arts, Science and Technology. He also
works in the National Telecommunication
Corporation. His research areas are
Information System, Mobile technology
applications in the healthcare sector and dis-
ability assistance. He is also interested in
MANET and sensor networks, including their
security and routing issues.
Obaid Ullah Owais Khan is working as an
Assistant Director (IT) and Deputy Secretary
(IT/ICT) at Pakistan Standards and Quality
Control Authority. He is involved in the stan-
dardization process of IT/ICT in Pakistan. He
has done his BE (IT) from Hamdard University.
He is doing his MS (CS) from Federal Urdu
University of Arts, Science and Technology,
Karachi, Pakistan. He is an active member of
Joint Technical Committee 1 of the
International Organization for Standardization
(ISO) and the International Electro technical
Commission (IEC). His research areas include mobile ad hoc network and
its security, wireless sensor network, wireless body area network and
mobile applications for healthcare.
Abdul Salam has completed his MS
(Computer Science) from Federal Urdu
University of Arts, Science and Technology,
Karachi. He is a a visiting faculty member in
Computer Science Department, Federal Urdu
University of Arts, Science and Technology.
His research areas are mobile ad hoc network
and sensor networks, including their security
issues. Wireless sensor networks, Wireless
Body Area Sensor Network, including Quality
of Service in WBASN, Mobile technology
applications in the healthcare sector.
Sarwat Iqbal is a PhD Scholar and a visiting
faculty member in Computer Science
Department, Federal Urdu University of Arts,
Science and Technology. Her research areas
are mobile technology applications in the
healthcare, knowledge management and
enterprise architecture. In addition she is also
interested in mobile ad hoc network and
sensor networks, including their security and
routing issues and application of statistical
techniques in MANET and healthcare.
Kamran Ahsan is an assistant professor at the
department of computer science Federal Urdu
University of Arts, Science & Technology. He
has served as PhD researcher and lecturer in
FCET (Faculty of Computing, Engineering and
Technology) and, web researcher in Centre for
Ageing and Mental Health, Staffordshire
University, UK since 2005. He has an MSc in
Mobile Computer Systems from Staffordshire
University in Computer Science from
University of Karachi. He is Visiting Faculty at
University of Karachi. He is a consultant to
businesses in IT applications, software development and web tools. His
research interests are mobile technology applications in healthcare
including knowledge management.