Guest Editors:
Dr. Lorenzo Mucchi, University of Florence, Italy
Dr. Matti Hamalainen, University of Oulu, Finland
Dr. Kamya Yekeh Yazdandoost, National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, Japan
Dr. Kamran Sayrafian-Pour, National Institute of Standards and Technology, USA

The medical care is increasingly associated with and reliant upon concepts of and advances in electronics and electromagnetics. Recent technological advances in sensors, low-power microelectronics, miniaturization, and wireless networking have enabled the design and proliferation of wireless body area networks capable of autonomously monitoring and controlling different applications.

One of the most promising applications of body area networks is for human health monitoring. A number of tiny wireless sensors, strategically placed on/in the human body, create a wireless body area network that can monitor various vital signs, providing real-time feedback to the user and medical personnel. Communications from in-body implants and on-body sensors will allow for better diagnoses and improve therapy. The wireless body area networks promise to revolutionize health monitoring.

Healthcare systems can be significantly improved with lower cost and higher quality of services by using ultra wideband new emerging technologies. These benefits and impacts have fuelled increasing interest from the public and have attracted significant support and investment from government, industrial and academic researchers. Challenges facing the UWB wireless communications in healthcare systems include:

* the design of architectures among wireless communications for supporting secure and
* reliable signal propagation with low network latency;
* channel modelling and RF and propagation close to body;
* waveform destruction due to body tissue;
* accurate indoor positioning; emergency response and detection;
* the need for privacy preservation of patients and
* the definition of healthcare policy and legal issues towards potential new applications.

This special issue aims for covering the state-of-the-art research on ultra wideband emerging wireless technologies and applications in healthcare, highlighting research challenges and open issues and bringing together researchers and medical professionals from academia, industry and government with the goal of fostering collaboration among them. Original, unpublished contributions and invited articles, reflecting those aspects of UWB communication research in healthcare, distinctly different from the wireless communication research in general, are encouraged.

Subject Coverage

The topics of interest for the special issue within the area of healthcare include, but are not limited to:

* UWB WBAN antennas
* WBAN channel modelling
* Field trials and measurements campaigns
* Media access control (MAC)
* Modulation and detection
* QoS provisioning
* Energy-efficient algorithms
* Middleware for enabling medical applications
* UWB sensors for remote diagnosis
* Mobile patient monitoring devices and systems
* Interactive and real-time WBAN systems and devices
* Interference and co-existence
* Security and privacy issues
* Policy and standardization
* Hardware architecture and implementation

Notes for Prospective Authors

Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. (N.B. Conference papers may only be submitted if the paper was not originally copyrighted and if it has been completely re-written).

All papers are refereed through a peer review process. A guide for authors, sample copies and other relevant information for submitting papers are available on the Author Guidelines page (http://www.inderscience.com/mapper.php?id=31).

Important Dates

Deadline for submission: 1 March, 2011
End of review process: 1 May, 2011
Deadline for final manuscript submission: 15 June, 2011

Editors and Notes

You may send one copy in the form of an MS Word or pdf file attached to an e-mail (details in Author Guidelines page: http://www.inderscience.com/mapper.php?id=31) to the following:

Dr. Lorenzo Mucchi
Department of Electronics and Telecommunications
University of Florence
Italy
E-mail: lorenzo.mucchi@unifi.it

Dr. Matti Hamalainen
Centre for Wireless Communications
University of Oulu
Finland
E-mail: matti.hamalainen@ee.oulu.fi

Dr. Kamya Yekeh Yazdandoost
National Institute of Information and Communications Technology
Japan
E-mail: yazdandoost@nict.go.jp

Dr. Kamran Sayrafian-Pour
National Institute of Standards and Technology
USA
E-mail: ksayrafian@nist.gov

Please include in your submission the title of the Special Issue, the title of the Journal and the name of the Guest Editor