A comprehensive study of channel estimation for WBAN-based healthcare systems: feasibility of using multiband UWB

Wireless personal area network (WPAN) is an emerging in wireless technology for short range indoor and outdoor communication applications. A more specific category of WPAN is the wireless body area network (WBAN) used for health monitoring. On the other hand, multiband orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MB-OFDM) ultra-wideband (UWB) comes with a number of desirable features at the physical layer for wireless communications, for example, very high data rate. One big challenge in adoption of multiband UWB in WBAN is the fact that channel estimation becomes difficult under the constraint of extremely low transmission power. Moreover, the heterogeneous environment of WBAN causes a dense multipath wireless channel. Therefore, effective channel estimation is required in the receiver of WBAN-based healthcare system that uses multiband UWB. In this paper, we first outline the MB-OFDM UWB system. Then, we present an overview of channel estimation techniques proposed/investigated for multiband UWB communications with emphasis on their strengths and weaknesses. Useful suggestions are given to overcome the weaknesses so that these methods can be particularly useful for WBAN channels. Also, we analyze the comparative performances of the techniques using computer simulation in order to find the energy-efficient channel estimation methods for WBAN-based healthcare systems.