QoS issues with focus on Wireless Body Area Networks

Wireless body area networks (WBAN) applications have emerged as one of the hottest research areas of wireless sensor networks (WSN). With the advent of miniature, cost effective and wearable sensor devices, WBAN has attracted large amount of research time. Lots of works are going on in this direction. Besides open issues in WSN like standardization, energy efficiency, security and privacy factors, QoS issues are also of major concern. Lots of research is going on around the world to improve QoS factors in sensor networks. Some people have suggested protocols with QoS focus for WSN. But QoS requirements vary from application to application. It is fact that the heterogeneous working requirements of WBAN define different QoS issues which are specific to that particular application area only. WBAN applications are very sensitive and hence QoS issues in WBAN require more attention and focus and should be taken up more seriously. In this paper we have tried to present various aspects of QoS with focus on WBAN. We have also tried to present other factors that particularly influence the overall quality of service in WBAN.