Towards Confident Body Sensor Networking

With the recent technology advances of wireless communication and lightweight low-power sensors, Body Sensor Network (BSN) is made possible. More and more researchers are interested in developing numerous novel BSN applications, such as remote health/fitness monitoring, military and sport training, interactive gaming, personal information sharing, and secure authentication. Despite the unstable wireless communication, various confidence requirements are placed on the BSN networking service. This thesis aims to provide Quality of Service (QoS) solutions for BSN communication, in order to achieve the required confidence goals.;We develop communication quality solutions to satisfy confidence requirements from both the communication and application levels, in single and multiple BSNs. First, we build communication QoS, targeting at providing service quality guarantees in terms of throughput and time delay on the communication level. More specifically, considering the heterogeneous BSN platform in a real deployment, we develop a radio-agnostic solution for wireless resource scheduling in the BSN. Second, we provide a QoS solution for both inter- and intra-BSN communications when more than one BSNs are involved. Third, we define application fidelity for two neurometric applications as examples, and bridge a connection between the communication QoS and application QoS

Mobihealth: mobile health services based on body area networks

In this chapter we describe the concept of MobiHealth and the approach developed during the MobiHealth project (MobiHealth, 2002). The concept was to bring together the technologies of Body Area Networks (BANs), wireless broadband communications and wearable medical devices to provide mobile healthcare services for patients and health professionals. These technologies enable remote patient care services such as management of chronic conditions and detection of health emergencies. Because the patient is free to move anywhere whilst wearing the MobiHealth BAN, patient mobility is maximised. The vision is that patients can enjoy enhanced freedom and quality of life through avoidance or reduction of hospital stays. For the health services it means that pressure on overstretched hospital services can be alleviated

On-Body Channel Measurement Using Wireless Sensors

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Characterization of the on-body path Loss at 2.45 GHz and energy efficient WBAN design for dairy cows

Wireless body area networks (WBANs) provide promising applications in the healthcare monitoring of dairy cows. The characterization of the path loss (PL) between on-body nodes constitutes an important step in the deployment of a WBAN. In this paper, the PL between nodes placed on the body of a dairy cow was determined at 2.45 GHz. Finite-difference time domain simulations with two half-wavelength dipoles placed 20 mm above a cow model were performed using a 3-D electromagnetic solver. Measurements were conducted on a live cow to validate the simulation results. Excellent agreement between measurements and simulations was achieved and the obtained PL values as a function of the transmitter-receiver separation were well fitted by a lognormal PL model with a PL exponent of 3.1 and a PL at reference distance ( 10 cm) of 44 dB. As an application, the packet error rate ( PER) and the energy efficiency of different WBAN topologies for dairy cows (i.e., single-hop, multihop, and cooperative networks) were investigated. The analysis results revealed that exploiting multihop and cooperative communication schemes decrease the PER and increase the optimal payload packet size. The analysis results revealed that exploiting multihop and cooperative communication schemes increase the optimal payload packet size and improve the energy efficiency by 30%

Vital signs monitoring and management using mobile devices

Constant breakthroughs in medical sensor technology and mobile devices fields, combined with growing wireless communication capabilities, have made possible the emergence of new health monitoring paradigms. The ever-increasing features of PDAs and smartphones make them a vital component in innovative health monitoring systems. In this paper, we introduce a handset mobile monitoring and management system, developed as complement to a complete vital signs monitoring project (MOHLL). The main purpose of this system is to provide physicians with real-time visualization of the patients’ vital parameters, namely the ECG trace, heart rate, and body temperature, through an Internet-connected PDA.Clinical and financial support for the case-study has been provided by Grupo AMI - Assistencia Medica Integral (Casa de Saude de Guimaraes, SA), Portugal, under the partnership established between this healthcare company and the University of Minho