Evolution of Wireless Standards for Health Monitoring

Technology is playing a vital role in the improvement of medical field resulting in high life expectancy. The use of wireless networks is one of the modern and efficient ways to monitor health problems remotely. In this context, various wireless monitoring standards are developed to facilities the patient monitoring. Some key standards include IEEE 802.15.4 Low-Rate Wireless Personal Area Network (LR-WPAN), IEEE 802.15.6 Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) and ETSI smartBAN. These standards consist of multiple sensors that are used to monitor, process and transmit the vitals to the proper destination. Each standard offers some advantages and limitations over the other standard depending on the scenarios. In this paper, all the above-mentioned standards are compared and analyzed on different parameters such as network type, density, functionality, size and energy efficiency.