Cloud-assisted body area networks: state-of-the-art and future challenges

Fortino, G., Di Fatta, G., Pathan, M. and Vasilakos, A. V. (2014) Cloud-assisted body area networks: state-of-the-art and future challenges. Wireless Networks, 20 (7). pp. 1925-1938. ISSN 1022-0038 doi: 10.1007/s11276-014-0714-1

Abstract/Summary

Body area networks (BANs) are emerging as enabling technology for many human-centered application domains such as health-care, sport, fitness, wellness, ergonomics, emergency, safety, security, and sociality. A BAN, which basically consists of wireless wearable sensor nodes usually coordinated by a static or mobile device, is mainly exploited to monitor single assisted livings. Data generated by a BAN can be processed in real-time by the BAN coordinator and/or transmitted to a server-side for online/offline processing and long-term storing. A network of BANs worn by a community of people produces large amount of contextual data that require a scalable and efficient approach for elaboration and storage. Cloud computing can provide a flexible storage and processing infrastructure to perform both online and offline analysis of body sensor data streams. In this paper, we motivate the introduction of Cloud-assisted BANs along with the main challenges that need to be addressed for their development and management. The current state-of-the-art is overviewed and framed according to the main requirements for effective Cloud-assisted BAN architectures. Finally, relevant open research issues in terms of efficiency, scalability, security, interoperability, prototyping, dynamic deployment and management, are discussed.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/36468
Identification Number/DOI	10.1007/s11276-014-0714-1
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Computer Science
Uncontrolled Keywords	Body area networks Cloud computing Mobile computing Workflow Data analysis
Publisher	Springer
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