## 1 Introduction  
Wireless sensor network (WSN) technologies have the potential to change our lifestyle with different applications in fields such as healthcare, entertainment, travel, retail, industry, dependent care and emergency management, in addition to many other areas. The combination of wireless sensors and sensor networks with computing and artificial intelligence research have built a cross-disciplinary concept of ambient intelligence in order to overcome the challenges we face in everyday life [1]. One of the main challenges facing the World in recent years has been the increase in the elderly population in developed countries. According to the Population Reference Bureau [2], over the next 20 years, the 65-and over population in the developed countries will become almost 20% of the total population. Hence the need to provide quality care and service in these countries for a rapidly growing population of elderly people, while reducing the healthcare costs is an important issue for governments and health service providers in such countries. Wearable and implantable body sensor network systems are one tool to achieve this objective, as a prominent application in these areas is the integration of sensing and consumer electronics technologies which would allow people to be monitored during all their everyday activities. Body sensor network systems can help people by providing healthcare services such as medical monitoring, memory enhancement, control of home appliances, medical data access, and communication in emergency situations [3, 4]. Continuous monitoring with wearable and implantable body sensor networks will increase early detection of emergency conditions and diseases in at risk patients and also provide a wide range of healthcare services for people with various degrees of cognitive and physical disabilities. Not only the elderly and chronically ill, but also the families in which both parents have to work will benefit from these systems to provide high-quality care services for their babies and children. Researchers in various interdisciplinary fields such as computing, engineering, and medicine fields are working together in order to ensure that the broad vision of wearable and implantable body sensor networks (WIBSNs) for smart healthcare, as illustrated in Figure 1, can be fulfilled. The importance of integrating large scale wireless telecommunication technologies such as 3G, Wi-Fi Mesh, and WiMAX, with telemedicine has already been addressed by some researchers. There are already several applications and prototypes for this purpose. For example, some of them are considered for continuous monitoring of people suffering from cognitive disorders like Alzheimer's,  
Figure 1: Interdisciplinary sciences for the future of WIBSN. Parkinson's or similar diseases. Some papers focus on fall detection, posture detection and location tracking, while others make use of biological and environmental sensors to identify patients' health status. There is also a significant research focus on the development of tiny wireless sensor devices, preferably integrated into fabrics or other wearable substances or implanted in the human body. The range of wearable and implantable biomedical devices will increase significantly in the next years, thanks to the improvements in micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) technology, wireless communications, and digital electronics, achieved in recent years [5]. These advances have allowed the development of low-cost, low power, multi-functional sensor nodes that are small in size and can communicate over short distances, and tiny sensor nodes, which consist of sensing, data processing, and communicating components, and to take advantage of the idea of sensor networks based on collaborative effort of a large number of nodes.