A Survey on M2M Systems for mHealth: A Wireless Communications Perspective <s>  <s> Driven by the confluence between the need to collect data about people's physical, physiological, psychological, cognitive, and behavioral processes in spaces ranging from personal to urban and the recent availability of the technologies that enable this data collection, wireless sensor networks for healthcare have emerged in the recent years. In this review, we present some representative applications in the healthcare domain and describe the challenges they introduce to wireless sensor networks due to the required level of trustworthiness and the need to ensure the privacy and security of medical data. These challenges are exacerbated by the resource scarcity that is inherent with wireless sensor network platforms. We outline prototype systems spanning application domains from physiological and activity monitoring to large-scale physiological and behavioral studies and emphasize ongoing research challenges. <s> BIB001 </s> A Survey on M2M Systems for mHealth: A Wireless Communications Perspective <s>  <s> Advances in wireless communication technologies, such as wearable and implantable biosensors, along with recent developments in the embedded computing area are enabling the design, development, and implementation of body area networks. This class of networks is paving the way for the deployment of innovative healthcare monitoring applications. In the past few years, much of the research in the area of body area networks has focused on issues related to wireless sensor designs, sensor miniaturization, low-power sensor circuitry, signal processing, and communications protocols. In this paper, we present an overview of body area networks, and a discussion of BAN communications types and their related issues. We provide a detailed investigation of sensor devices, physical layer, data link layer, and radio technology aspects of BAN research. We also present a taxonomy of BAN projects that have been introduced/proposed to date. Finally, we highlight some of the design challenges and open issues that still need to be addressed to make BANs truly ubiquitous for a wide range of applications. <s> BIB002 </s> A Survey on M2M Systems for mHealth: A Wireless Communications Perspective <s>  <s> Becoming mature enough to be used for improving the quality of life, wireless sensor network technologies are considered as one of the key research areas in computer science and healthcare application industries. The pervasive healthcare systems provide rich contextual information and alerting mechanisms against odd conditions with continuous monitoring. This minimizes the need for caregivers and helps the chronically ill and elderly to survive an independent life, besides provides quality care for the babies and little children whose both parents have to work. Although having significant benefits, the area has still major challenges which are investigated in this paper. We provide several state of the art examples together with the design considerations like unobtrusiveness, scalability, energy efficiency, security and also provide a comprehensive analysis of the benefits and challenges of these systems. <s> BIB003 </s> A Survey on M2M Systems for mHealth: A Wireless Communications Perspective <s>  <s> The increasing use of wireless networks and the constant miniaturization of electrical devices has empowered the development of Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs). In these networks various sensors are attached on clothing or on the body or even implanted under the skin. The wireless nature of the network and the wide variety of sensors offer numerous new, practical and innovative applications to improve health care and the Quality of Life. The sensors of a WBAN measure for example the heartbeat, the body temperature or record a prolonged electrocardiogram. Using a WBAN, the patient experiences a greater physical mobility and is no longer compelled to stay in the hospital. This paper offers a survey of the concept of Wireless Body Area Networks. First, we focus on some applications with special interest in patient monitoring. Then the communication in a WBAN and its positioning between the different technologies is discussed. An overview of the current research on the physical layer, existing MAC and network protocols is given. Further, cross layer and quality of service is discussed. As WBANs are placed on the human body and often transport private data, security is also considered. An overview of current and past projects is given. Finally, the open research issues and challenges are pointed out. <s> BIB004 </s> A Survey on M2M Systems for mHealth: A Wireless Communications Perspective <s>  <s> Machine-to-machine communications for healthcare is emerging for the benefit of humans. In addition to novel medium access, we provide a systematic view to look for ways to develop technology to accomplish this goal, and a thorough vision toward effective system and network design. Category: Smart and intelligent computing <s> BIB005 </s> A Survey on M2M Systems for mHealth: A Wireless Communications Perspective <s>  <s> Abstract Objective: In this article, we describe the important aspects like major characteristics, research issues, and challenges with body area sensor networks in telemedicine systems for patient monitoring in different scenarios. Present and emerging developments in communications integrated with the developments in microelectronics and embedded system technologies will have a dramatic impact on future patient monitoring and health information delivery systems. The important challenges are bandwidth limitations, power consumption, and skin or tissue protection. Materials and Methods: This article presents a detailed survey on wireless body area networks (WBANs). Results and Conclusions: We have designed the framework for integrating body area networks on telemedicine systems. Recent trends, overall WBAN-telemedicine framework, and future research scope have also been addressed in this article. <s> BIB006 </s> A Survey on M2M Systems for mHealth: A Wireless Communications Perspective <s>  <s> Wireless Body area networks (WBANs) consist of sensors that continuously monitor and transmit real time vital signals to a nearby coordinator and then to a remote terminal via the Internet. One of the most important signals for monitoring in WBANs is the electrocardiography (ECG) signal. The design of an accurate and energy efficient ECG telemonitoring system can be achieved by: i) reducing the amount of data that should be transmitted ii) minimizing the computational operations executed at any transmitter/receiver in a WBAN. To this end, compressed sensing (CS) approaches can offer a viable solution. In this paper, we propose two novel CS based ECG reconstruction algorithms that minimize the samples that are required to be transmitted for an accurate reconstruction, by exploiting the block structure of the ECG in the time domain (TD) and in an uncorrelated domain (UD). The proposed schemes require the solutions of second-order cone programming (SOCP) problems that are usually tackled by computational demanding interior point (IP) methods. To solve these problems efficiently, we develop a path-wise coordinate descent based scheme. The reconstruction accuracy is evaluated by the percentage root-mean-square difference (PRD) metric. A reconstructed signal is acceptable if and only if PRD < 9 % . Simulation studies carried out with real electrocardiographic (ECG) data, show that the proposed schemes, operating in both the TD and in the UD as compared to the conventional CS techniques, reduce the Compression Ratio (CR) by 20 % and 44 % respectively, offering at the same time significantly low computational complexity. <s> BIB007
projections forecast that more than 774 million health-related devices with M2M connectivity will be available by 2020, yielding a total revenue of 69 billion euros in that year  . The use of mobile and wireless communication technologies to facilitate and improve healthcare and medical services, referred to by the term mHealth, is bringing a shift to healthcare delivery. The mHealth field can be considered as a subset of telemedicine, which is a broad term referring to the delivery of healthcare services between at least two remote locations, involving the communication between healthcare providers or the interaction between a healthcare provider and a patient  . Telemedicine can transform healthcare delivery across several medical disciplines, from cardiology and surgery to ophthalmology and psychiatry. The potential mHealth application scenarios are numerous, including the active management of diseases such as diabetes (e.g., by measuring blood sugar levels and controlling the insulin dosage accordingly), the support for independent aging to the elderly (e.g., by tracking their medication intake and their activity level) and the monitoring of personal fitness activities to improve health and well-being (e.g., by logging health and fitness indicators during workouts)  . As the sensing technology advances, future mHealth applications are expected to emerge  BIB006 , such as cancer detection (through the monitoring of cancer cells), management of heart condition (through the monitoring of biochemical markers) and vision enhancement (through implanted retina prosthesis chips), to name a few. Overall, mHealth can offer significant benefits for both patients and healthcare providers, ensuring enhanced quality, efficiency, flexibility and cost reductions in healthcare delivery. The M2M paradigm in the context of mHealth involves the use of appropriate sensor devices on patients. The medical sensors, placed in the vicinity of, or inside, the human body, are usually interconnected through a short-range wireless technology, thus forming a Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN). An M2M-enabled gateway node collects all the sensory data from the WBAN and forwards them to a remote online server, where processing and integration with medical-related software applications take place. The connection of the gateway to the Internet is generally based on long-range communication access technologies for Wireless Local/Metropolitan Area Networks (WLANs/WMANs). The M2M technology paves the way for new possibilities for mHealth applications, by enabling the remote monitoring of vital signals BIB007 , the early detection of critical conditions and the remote control of certain medical treatments  . The collection of large amount of data and their timely delivery to the healthcare providers in an unobtrusive way for the patient and without the need for human interaction can significantly facilitate the management of chronic diseases and speed up the diagnosis of critical conditions. In the recent years, the research community has been motivated by the diversity of applications, the promising benefits and the potential market opportunities of mHealth M2M solutions. The main technological challenges for M2M communications, the most representative usage models and the status of global standardization efforts are discussed in  . Focusing on the emerging M2M technologies for mHealth applications, a technical discussion on the communication network design is given in BIB005 , but generally most of the related work adopts a high-level approach. In  , some interesting challenges from the network perspective are identified, while interoperability issues and recent standardization efforts are presented in  . On a different level, a lot of research activity has been focused on the body area domain, on the design of medical sensor devices BIB001 and on the main advances and challenges in the field of WBANs BIB002 BIB004 BIB003  . However, recent important work in the rapidly growing field of WBAN communication technologies have not been included in the aforementioned works, while the end-to-end holistic M2M approach is barely considered. In this context, this paper aims to provide a comprehensive survey on M2M systems for mHealth applications from a wireless communication perspective. This paper discusses many aspects of the M2M ecosystem in the healthcare domain, however, the main novel contribution is threefold: