Table 1.
Comparison between medical BAN and general WSN
| Medical BAN | General WSN | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Common features | Limited resources: battery, computation, memory, energy efficiency Diversity coexistence environment low/modest data rate, low/modest duty cycle Dynamic network scale, plug-and-play, heterogeneous devices ability, dense distribution | ||
| Sensor/ actuator | Single-function device | Multi-function device | |
| Fast relative movement in small range device lifetime, days, <10 years (implant sensor) | Rare or slow movement in large range network lifetime and device lifetime, months, <10 years | ||
| Safe (low SAR) and quality first | Cost sensitive | ||
| Dependability | Reliability (first), guaranteed QoS | Expected QoS, redundancy-based reliability | |
| Strongly security (except emergency) | Required security | ||
| Networking | Small scale star network | Large scale hierarchical network redundant distribution | |
| No redundancy in device | Random node distribution | ||
| Random node distributionDeterministic node distribution | |||
| Traffic | Periodical real time (dominant), burst (priority) | Burst (dominant), periodical | |
| Uni-directional traffic | Uni-directional or bi-directional traffic | ||
| M:1 communication | M:1 or point-point communication | ||
| channel | Specific medical channel, ISM band | ISM band | |
| Body surface or through body | Obstacle is unknown | ||