Continuous and automated monitoring of patient vital signs has become a necessity in today's hospitals due to a shortage of skilled nurses, stringent reporting requirements and a desire to reduce medical errors. Body sensors will be used to measure various vital signs, such as pulse-oxygen and ECG, and the resulting information will be collected and exchanged via a wireless body area network (WBAN). Since these sensors are expected to be disposable and operate off of limited power supplies, such as paper and hearing-aid batteries, their power consumption and production costs must be extremely small. Because of these and other unique requirements, a new task group within the IEEE 802 was created to develop an ultra-low power, ultra-low cost wireless networking standard. In this talk, we present various applications and their corresponding requirements that will use a medical WBAN, and the current state of the IEEE 802.15.6 standards development.
Anuj Batra received a B.S. degree, with distinction, in electrical engineering from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, in 1992; a M.S. degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University, Stanford, CA, in 1993; and a Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, in 2000.
In 1992, he was with Raytheon E-Systems, Falls Church, VA, where he designed algorithms for a software-defined radio based on the AMPS standard. In 2000, he joined the Digital Signal Processing Solutions (DSPS) Research and Development Center, Texas Instruments, Inc. (TI), Dallas, TX, where he has developed several wireless commutations technologies, including the multi-band OFDM (MB-OFDM) physical layer for UWB spectrum, IEEE 802.11g/n wireless LAN technologies, and adaptive frequency hopping techniques for Bluetooth 2.x devices. More recently, he has been working on the development of long term evolution (LTE) of cellular networks, wireless networking for body area networks and cognitive radio technique for TV white spaces.
In 2004, Dr. Batra was named one of the world's 100 Top Young Innovators by Technology Review, MIT's Magazine of Innovation, for his work on developing and championing the MB-OFDM UWB technology.
He is currently a Senior Member of Technical Staff at TI and his research interests are in the areas of wireless communications, in particular, the design of high-speed wireless networks, multi-user detection theory, and coexistence between unlicensed wireless devices. He has filed over 80 patents, of which 20 have issued, edited a book on Ultra-wideband Systems, written a book chapter on the Multi-band OFDM physical layer, written 16 referred papers (some of which were invited), published 9 industry articles and presented 10 tutorials.