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Rice straw biochar improves soil fertility, growth, and yield of rice–wheat system on a sandy loam soil
- R. K. Gupta, Ashaq Hussain, Yadvinder-Singh, S. S. Sooch, J. S. Kang, Sandeep Sharma, G. S. Dheri
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- Journal:
- Experimental Agriculture / Volume 56 / Issue 1 / February 2020
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 03 July 2019, pp. 118-131
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Biochar has received attention due to its potential for mitigating climate change through carbon sequestration in soil and improving soil quality and crop productivity. This study evaluated the effects of rice straw biochar (RSB) and rice husk ash (RHA) each applied at 5 Mg ha−1 and four N levels (0, 40, 80, and 120 kg ha−1) on soil fertility, growth, and yield of rice and wheat for three consecutive rice–wheat rotations. RSB significantly increased electrical conductivity, dehydrogenase activity, and P and K contents when compared to control (no amendment) up to 7.5 cm soil depth. Both RSB and RHA did not influence shoot N concentration in wheat plant but significantly increased P and K concentrations at 60 days after sowing. Grain yields of both rice and wheat were significantly higher in RSB as compared to control (no amendment) and RHA treatments. While the highest grain yields of rice and wheat were observed at 120 kg N ha−1 in RHA and no biochar-treated plots, a significant increase in grain yields was observed at 80 kg N ha−1 in RSB treatment, thereby saving 40 kg N ha−1 in each crop. Both agronomic and recovery N efficiencies in rice and wheat were significantly higher in RSB-amended soil compared to control. Significant positive correlations were observed between soil N, P, and K concentrations and total N, P, and K concentrations in aboveground biomass of wheat at 60 days after sowing. This study showed the potential benefits of applying RSB for improving soil fertility and yields of rice and wheat in a rice–wheat system.
3 - BAN models and requirements
- Sandeep K. S. Gupta, Arizona State University, Tridib Mukherjee, Krishna Kumar Venkatasubramanian, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Massachusetts
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- Body Area Networks
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- 05 April 2013
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- 18 April 2013, pp 26-35
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Summary
In this book, we mainly focus on the pervasive health-monitoring system (PHMS), where the BAN nodes act as medical devices. Stand-alone BANs are typically ineffective due to their low computation and storage capability and limited battery life, especially when used in a PHMS setting. Thus, in PHMSes a BAN is usually used in conjunction with high-end embedded devices such as the smart phone and cloud-based computational and storage resources. Figure 3.1 shows the basic hardware architecture of a PHMS with the BAN deployed on the human body, communicating to a smart phone, which has limited storage and higher computation capability. The smart phone in turn uses the cloud for further processing and storage related to diagnosis and other applications. There have been different implementations of this basic architecture of a PHMS, each assuming different capabilities of the BAN, smart phone, and cloud. From a survey of the health-monitoring applications available on the market (at the time of writing this book), three categories of PHMS implementations have been identified.
In the first category, the sensors are considered to be merely data-collection units with no computation and storage. The sensors are merely monitoring devices and are not approved as marketable medical devices by the FDA in the USA. The smart phone acts as the primary computation device; it performs signal processing on the physiological signals and displays results to the user. […]
2 - Body area networks
- Sandeep K. S. Gupta, Arizona State University, Tridib Mukherjee, Krishna Kumar Venkatasubramanian, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Massachusetts
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- Book:
- Body Area Networks
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- 05 April 2013
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- 18 April 2013, pp 9-25
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Summary
A body area network (BAN) is a network consisting of a heterogeneous set of nodes that can sense, actuate, compute, and communicate with each other through a multihop wireless channel. A BAN collects, processes, and stores physiological (such as electrocardiogram (ECG) and blood pressure), activity (such as walking, running, and sleeping), and environmental (such as ambient temperature, humidity, and presence of allergens) parameters from the host's body and its immediate surroundings; and can even actuate treatment (such as drug delivery), on the basis of the data collected. BANs can be very useful in assisting medical professionals to make informed decisions about the course of the patient's treatment by providing them with continuous information about the patient's condition.
BANs belong to a much more generic class of device networks called wireless sensor networks (WSNs) [27]. BANs evolved from WSNs through a series of intermediate steps whereby first the WSN concept was applied to personal devices such as laptops, phones, cameras, and printers. Such networks are called personal area networks (PANs) [28], or wireless PANs (WPANs) [28]. From WPANs evolved BANs in which medical devices, such as pulse oximeters, and personal computing or auxiliary devices such as smart phones and retina prostheses [29, 30] were networked through the wireless channel and worn on the body. Devices were also implanted, such as pacemakers, which communicate through the body to an outside controller. In a hospital setting, BANs are networked with other in-hospital medical devices such as Holter monitors and medical data recorders to form medical device networks (MDNs) [31] for post-operative or intensive-care-unit (ICU) patient monitoring.
4 - Safety
- Sandeep K. S. Gupta, Arizona State University, Tridib Mukherjee, Krishna Kumar Venkatasubramanian, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Massachusetts
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- Body Area Networks
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- 05 April 2013
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- 18 April 2013, pp 36-62
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Summary
This chapter focuses on the various definitions, challenges, and approaches to BAN safety. Standard ISO 60601, a standard for medical devices, defines safety as the avoidance of unacceptable risks of hazards to the physical environment (i.e., to the patient) due to the operation of a medical device under normal or single-fault condition. Although this definition is akin to that for medical devices, it can be generally applicable to BANs as well, which are essentially networks of such devices. The standard further lists seven aspects of safety as follows.
Operational aspect. This aspect considers safety as the correct (and error-free) operation of the medical device, which might involve software, hardware, and electrical and mechanical operations, as well as the usage of medical devices in clinical processes (or medical scenarios).
Radiation aspect. This aspect of safety is geared towards ensuring that any radiation (e.g., X-ray radiation) from the device does not harm the patient.
Thermal aspect. This aspect of safety concerns the need to ensure that any heat dissipated because of medical-device operation and power consumption does not burn any part of the patient's body.
Biocompatibility. This aspect requires the materials used for the medical device to be compatible with the human body.
Software aspect. This aspect is essentially covered under the operational aspect; however, with the proliferation of software-enabled devices and sensors, special emphasis has been placed on correct operation of device software (e.g., code consistency and execution flow).
Mechanical aspect. This aspect principally requires that any actuation (e.g., the infusion process employed by an infusion pump) from the medical device does not cause harm to the body.
Electrical aspect. This aspect is intended to ensure that the device does not deliver any electrical shock to the body.
Index
- Sandeep K. S. Gupta, Arizona State University, Tridib Mukherjee, Krishna Kumar Venkatasubramanian, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Massachusetts
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- Body Area Networks
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- 18 April 2013, pp 138-141
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Frontmatter
- Sandeep K. S. Gupta, Arizona State University, Tridib Mukherjee, Krishna Kumar Venkatasubramanian, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Massachusetts
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- Body Area Networks
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- 18 April 2013, pp i-vi
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References
- Sandeep K. S. Gupta, Arizona State University, Tridib Mukherjee, Krishna Kumar Venkatasubramanian, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Massachusetts
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- Body Area Networks
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- 18 April 2013, pp 128-137
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Acknowledgments
- Sandeep K. S. Gupta, Arizona State University, Tridib Mukherjee, Krishna Kumar Venkatasubramanian, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Massachusetts
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- Body Area Networks
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- 05 April 2013
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- 18 April 2013, pp xvii-xviii
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Appendix: Publication venues, academic research groups, and funding agencies
- Sandeep K. S. Gupta, Arizona State University, Tridib Mukherjee, Krishna Kumar Venkatasubramanian, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Massachusetts
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- Body Area Networks
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- 18 April 2013, pp 127-127
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Body area networks (BANs) are increasingly becoming a topic of great interest for researchers. Researchers are involved in the development of cutting-edge hardware for BANs, and of their software infrastructure, using BANs in medical, sports, and entertainment applications, and building theoretical background for BAN design and verification. For the dissemination of this precious knowledge several prestigious journals and conferences have come into being. Pre-eminent among them are ACM Wireless Health (http://www.wirelesshealth2012.org/) and IEEE BSN (http://www.bsn2012.org/). There are many other conferences and journals that publish research articles on BSNs. Here is a list of a few of them: IEEE Milcom (http://www.milcom.org/), IEEE Infocom (http://www.ieee-infocom.org/), Percom (http://www.percom.org/), IEEE EMBC (http://embc2012.embs.org/), and ACM MSWiM (http://mswimconf.com/2012/) are important conferences; while ACM TECS (http://acmtecs.acm.org/), ACM TOSN (https://sites.google.com/site/acmtosn/), IEEE TON (http://www.ton.seas.upenn.edu/), IEEE Proceedings (http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=5), and IEEE TITB (http://bme.ee.cuhk.edu.hk/TITB/) are notable journals.
There are many academic research groups that are working on various hardware and software aspects of BANs. Specifically, the following academic research groups are involved in research related to BAN software: the IMPACT Lab at Arizona State University (http://bme.ee.cuhk.edu.hk/TITB/), the Media Labs at MIT (http://www.media.mit.edu/), the Center for Wireless Health at the University of Virginia (http://wirelesshealth.virginia.edu/), the ESSP Lab at the University of Texas, Dallas (http://wirelesshealth.virginia.edu/), the Wireless Life Sciences Alliances at the University of California, Los Angeles (http://www.wirelesslifesciences.org/), Imperial College London (http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/), the NSL at the University of Washington, the Harvard Sensor Networks Lab, and the UAV Center for Wireless Health (http:/wirelesshealth.virginia.edu/).
5 - Security
- Sandeep K. S. Gupta, Arizona State University, Tridib Mukherjee, Krishna Kumar Venkatasubramanian, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Massachusetts
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- Body Area Networks
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- 05 April 2013
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- 18 April 2013, pp 63-83
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Summary
In this chapter, we focus on security for BANs. In particular, we present a new paradigm that uses environment coupling – a property inherent to BANs – for this purpose. However, before we delve into the details, we provide some general concepts and definitions pertaining to the notion of security, which we use throughout this chapter. Though the notion of security has many connotations, for the purposes of this book, we define it in the information-security context, as preventing unauthorized entities from viewing, accessing, or modifying data generated within a system. We use the term system in a generic sense to mean a computing system that takes an input, processes it, and provides an output.
In order to ensure information security within any system, five basic requirements need to be satisfied. (1) Data integrity ensures that all information generated and exchanged during the system's operation is accurate and complete without any alterations. (2) Data confidentiality ensures that all sensitive information generated within the system is disclosed only to those who are supposed to see it. (3) Authentication ensures that the system knows the identities of all the entities interacting with it, and vice versa. (4) Authorization ensures that any entity trying to access particular information from the system is able to access only that information to which it is entitled. (5) Availability ensures that any entity that uses the data and services and resources of the system is able to do so when required.
Preface
- Sandeep K. S. Gupta, Arizona State University, Tridib Mukherjee, Krishna Kumar Venkatasubramanian, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Massachusetts
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- Body Area Networks
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- 05 April 2013
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- 18 April 2013, pp xv-xvi
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Summary
Over the last decade, developments in miniaturization and low-powered electronics have led to the development of wireless sensor networks (WSNs), which are computational systems with the ability not only to sense their environments, but also to process and communicate the data obtained using a wireless channel. This book focuses on a specific class of WSNs, called body area networks (BANs) (also known in the literature as body sensor networks), which are networks of wireless sensors worn on or implanted within the human body and have the potential to revolutionize healthcare by enabling anytime and anywhere health monitoring and actuation. Already a plethora of applications for BANs is being developed for a variety of settings in order to provide managed care both for chronic and for acute conditions. For example, BANs have been developed for monitoring soldiers on the battlefield, managing patients in forward locations in a disaster-hit region, emergency management, elder care, and rehabilitation purposes. However, in order for these applications to be viable in the long run, it is necessary to design BANs to be safe in terms of not causing harm to the users, sustainable without requiring frequent battery replacements, and secure from clandestine eavesdropping or interference. These are particularly challenging problems given the complexity of BANs and the limited computational and communication resources available at the devices/sensors in the BANs.
7 - Implementation of BANs
- Sandeep K. S. Gupta, Arizona State University, Tridib Mukherjee, Krishna Kumar Venkatasubramanian, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Massachusetts
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- Body Area Networks
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- 05 April 2013
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- 18 April 2013, pp 104-118
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Summary
BANs are used in several smart and context-aware applications such as home-based health care [54], sports health management [142], entertainment [143], and military applications [144]. These applications impose several processing, communication, and storage requirements on the sensors in the BAN. For example, data sensing and storage are extensively required for home-based health care, computation-intensive physiological signal and image processing is required for military and entertainment applications, and online processing and communication of sensed data are used in sports health monitoring. Chapters 2 and 3 describe several BAN applications and their requirements in detail.
Usability issues in BAN, which include the need for easy wearability, infrequent re-charging of the battery, and thermally safe operation, prevent the use of powerful general-purpose processors in BAN sensors. Hence, application-specific developments of sensor platforms are essential for BANs. This has given rise to a plethora of sensor platforms that are being used for several BAN applications. These platforms are heterogeneous and typically limited in their computational, communication, and storage requirements. Processors ranging from powerful Intel xScale to low-power Atmega 128, radios ranging from power-hungry Bluetooth to efficient ZigBee, and storage ranging from 256 kB to 2 GB flash are available in current sensor platforms. Given these diversities in application requirements and sensor-platform capabilities, implementing a BAN application has two dimensions:
(1) choosing or designing a sensor platform that is best suited for a given application and
(2) implementing the given application in the sensor platform with stringent resource limitations.
Contents
- Sandeep K. S. Gupta, Arizona State University, Tridib Mukherjee, Krishna Kumar Venkatasubramanian, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Massachusetts
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- Body Area Networks
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- 05 April 2013
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- 18 April 2013, pp vii-x
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Glossary
- Sandeep K. S. Gupta, Arizona State University, Tridib Mukherjee, Krishna Kumar Venkatasubramanian, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Massachusetts
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- Body Area Networks
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- 05 April 2013
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- 18 April 2013, pp 121-126
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8 - Epilogue
- Sandeep K. S. Gupta, Arizona State University, Tridib Mukherjee, Krishna Kumar Venkatasubramanian, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Massachusetts
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- Body Area Networks
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- 05 April 2013
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- 18 April 2013, pp 119-120
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Summary
A decade ago wireless sensor networks (WSNs), resulting primarily from developments in miniaturization and low-powered electronics, opened up the possibility of deploying computing capabilities ubiquitously. Not surprisingly, the last few years have seen the extension of this capability to the human body, leading to the development of body area networks (BANs), which are networks of medical devices and sensors worn on or implanted in the human body. They are used for monitoring and actuation purposes and typically applied in, but not limited to, medical settings. In this book we have aimed at providing a systematic description of how to design and develop safe, secure, and sustainable BANs. We have focused on ideas heretofore available only in scattered research articles and development guides for open-source sensor platforms. Our hope is to bring the latest technological developments in the domain of BANs to a wider audience.
Body area networks are becoming increasingly vital for nations and societies worldwide, especially in an attempt to reduce the burgeoning healthcare costs. In this book we have attempted to give a cohesive account of (i) their principal components, properties, and characteristics; (ii) the need for safe, secure, and sustainable design of BANs and the approaches available for addressing this need; and (iii) experiences with, and issues involved in, implementing actual BANs, drawing on lessons learnt from actual implementation. So far, the major focus of the BAN community has been on developing the hardware platforms and basic signal-processing techniques for BANs.
1 - Introduction
- Sandeep K. S. Gupta, Arizona State University, Tridib Mukherjee, Krishna Kumar Venkatasubramanian, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Massachusetts
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- Body Area Networks
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- 05 April 2013
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- 18 April 2013, pp 1-8
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A healthy populace is essential for societal prosperity and well-being. This makes healthcare a basic societal necessity. Most societies endeavor to provide it in some form, usually in an organized manner through a system of medical facilities that are either private or public, or both. The current mode of delivering care relies on the patient initiating the care-delivery process. Figure 1.1 illustrates this model. It is a four-step process and requires the patient to observe the presence of specific symptoms, and visit a caregiver, who then diagnoses the problem and provides a treatment. We call this the traditional model of care delivery. The principal characteristic of the traditional model is that it is reactive in nature. No action is taken to improve the patient's condition unless the patient initiates the process. A problem with this approach is that it is inherently defensive in nature in fighting illness. This is particularly problematic if the symptoms for the patient's ailments seem benign or manifest late in the progression of the disease.
Additionally, the traditional model has other problems as well, especially those associated with scale. The whole model of care was designed for a society where the number of people requiring care was a very small percentage of the population. However, with the dramatic demographic shift taking place in the world, especially that associated with aging, the traditional model of care delivery will be a huge bottleneck.
6 - Sustainability
- Sandeep K. S. Gupta, Arizona State University, Tridib Mukherjee, Krishna Kumar Venkatasubramanian, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Massachusetts
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- Body Area Networks
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- 05 April 2013
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- 18 April 2013, pp 84-103
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Environmental sustainability has been of increasing interest in designing any system in recent times. Computing systems usually contribute to this drive of sustainability from two different perspectives: (i) the energy perspective and (ii) the equipment-recycling perspective. Sections 6.1 and 6.2 describe these perspectives of sustainability of computing systems in general. All subsequent sections will focus on how to ensure sustainability for BANs from the energy perspective.
The energy perspective
Sustainability from the energy perspective, also referred to as energy-sustainability, has two main objectives: (i) reducing the carbon footprint from the power grid and (ii) reducing the need for battery replacement (for computing equipment running on limited-energy batteries). To ensure that both these objectives are attained, energy-sustainability can be described as the balance between the power required for computation and the power available from renewable or green energy sources (e.g., sources in the environment such as solar power). Ideally, if the power available from external renewable energy sources is more than the power required for computation then a power grid (or battery) might not be needed, and computation can be said to be energy-sustainable. However, in reality, both the available and the required power may vary over time. For example, solar power is available only during the day, but power may be required during the night (depending on the time-varying computing operations performed). In such a case, power may need to be extracted from a power grid (or battery) during the night, thus making computing operations unsustainable.
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Body Area Networks
- Safety, Security, and Sustainability
- Sandeep K. S. Gupta, Tridib Mukherjee, Krishna Kumar Venkatasubramanian
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- Published online:
- 05 April 2013
- Print publication:
- 18 April 2013
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Body area networks (BANs) are networks of wireless sensors and medical devices embedded in clothing, worn on or implanted in the body, and have the potential to revolutionize healthcare by enabling pervasive healthcare. However, due to their critical applications affecting human health, challenges arise when designing them to ensure they are safe for the user, sustainable without requiring frequent battery replacements and secure from interference and malicious attacks. This book lays the foundations of how BANs can be redesigned from a cyber-physical systems perspective (CPS) to overcome these issues. Introducing cutting-edge theoretical and practical techniques and taking into account the unique environment-coupled characteristics of BANs, the book examines how we can re-imagine the design of safe, secure and sustainable BANs. It features real-world case studies, suggestions for further investigation and project ideas, making it invaluable for anyone involved in pervasive and mobile healthcare, telemedicine, medical apps and other cyber-physical systems.
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