Optical Wireless Links as an Alternative to Radio-Frequency for Medical Body Area Networks

It is now established that optical wireless communications (OWC) technology is a promising alternative or a complement to radio-frequencies for indoor transmissions. Considering that using OWC permits the reduction of electromagnetic pollution in human environment, this technology can be also a good candidate for wireless body area networks (WBANs) in particular for medical applications such as health monitoring. In this paper, we investigate the use of on-body OWC for mobile medical WBAN. Based on transmission scheme exploiting diffuse optical reflections over the patient environment, we investigate a star BAN topology using spreading codes for multiple access. We have developed a theoretical analysis to determine the performance of such network considering that the patient is moving in the room. The achievable quality of service for a typical health monitoring application is reported and discussed regarding the performance required by medical applications.