Experimental evaluation of IEEE 802.15.4/ZigBee for multi-patient ECG monitoring

IEEE 802.15.4/ZigBee wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are a promising alternative to cabled systems for patient monitoring in hospitals. Some areas where monitoring systems based on WSNs can be successfuly used are ambulatory, waiting and triage rooms, post-op, and emergency rooms. The low power and small size ZigBee devices have the ability to form self-configuring networks that can extend themselves through a hospital wing or floor. Using spatially distributed networks, it is possible to cover an extended area and serve several patients. However, the low data rate protocols provided by IEEE 802.15.4 poses several challenges, mainly because its protocols were primarily designed to operate in low traffic load scenarios but some vital signs sensors generate a large volume of data. This work presents an experimental evaluation of the performance of multi-hop ZigBee networks comprised of several nodes that carry the traffic of wearable electrocardiogram (ECG) sensors. The results indicate that star networks can relay 100% of the traffic generated by at least 12 ECG nodes. In tree topologies, the increase of the network traffic load reduces the performance but even these networks can reliably relay the traffic of a considerable number of ECG nodes.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)Grupo AMI – Assistência Médica Integral (Casa de Saúde Guimarães, SA

Bluetooth dynamic scheduling and interference mitigation

designed to support a wide variety of applications such as voice, streamed audio and video, web browsing, printing, and file sharing, each imposing a number of quality of service constraints including packet loss, latency, delay variation, and throughput. In addition to QOS support, another challenge for Bluetooth stems from having to share the 2.4 GHz ISM band with other wireless devices such as IEEE 802.11. The main goal of this paper is to investigate the use of a dynamic scheduling algorithm that guarantees QoS while reducing the impact of interference. We propose a mapping between some common QoS parameters such as latency and bit rate and the parameters used in the algorithm. We study the algorithm’s performance and obtain simulation results for selected scenarios and configurations of interest

Bluetooth and WLAN Coexistence: Challenges and Solutions

In this article we discuss solutions to the interference problem caused by the proximity and simultaneous operation of Bluetooth and WLAN networks. We consider different techniques that attempt to avoid time and frequency collisions of WLAN and Bluetooth transmissions. We conduct a comparative analysis of their respective performance and discuss the trends and trade-offs they bring for different applications and interference levels. Performance is measured in terms of packet loss, TCP goodput, delay, and delay jitter. I