A Review on Recent Energy Harvesting Methods for Increasing Battery Efficiency in WBANs

Abstract: Today, technology development has led humans to employ wearable and implantable devices for biomedical applications. An important research issue in this field is the wireless body area networks (WBANs), which focus on such devices. In WBAN, using batteries as the only energy supply is a significant challenge, especially in medical applications. Charging the batteries is a problem for patients who use WBAN. Replacing the battery is not very difficult for wearable devices, but implantable devices have different conditions. The use of batteries in implantable devices has many problems, including pain and costs due to surgery, mental stress, and lack of comfort. Batteries' life depends on their type, operation, the patient's medical condition, and other factors. This paper reviews recent energy harvesting methods for battery recharge in WBAN's sensors. Moreover, we provide future research directions on energy harvesting methods in WBANs. Therefore, active research fields such as reinforcement learning (RL) and distributed optimization in WBAN applications were investigated. We strongly believe that these insights will aid in studying and developing a new generation of rechargeable sensors in WBANs for fellow researchers.