ZIGBEE-BASED SMART FALL DETECTION AND NOTIFICATION SYSTEM WITH WEARABLE SENSOR (e-SAFE)

Fall is one of the serious health issues among elderly population in Malaysia. In the event of a fall, a strong impact may be inflicted on the elderly causing severe injuries or even death. Another research by the National Institutes of Health found that 67% of elderly who fall and fail to seek help within 72 hours are unlikely to survive. Current Personal Emergency Respond System (PERS) often employs the use of a manual emergency button. However this approach may not be useful if the fall victim become unconscious or even not be able to move to reach the emergency button. In addition, such as this approach also requires more time and inadequate to notify and seek for immediate help. This paper attempts to design and implement a smart fall detection system for real time notification known as e-SAFE. This system will automatically detect a fall and notifies the incident instantly to internal and external correspondence. The e-SAFE equipped with a wearable accelerometer sensor, microcontroller, ZigBee transceiver module and Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) device. The in-house correspondence will be notifies though the ZigBee technology, meanwhile the external correspondence will be notified through GSM. Once a fall has been detected by e-SAFE system, a Short Message Service (SMS) and an E-mail will be sent to predefined contacts which is stored in the system. This system will provide a path toward independent living for the elderly while keeping them save

An Enhancement of RTS/CTS Control Handshake in CSMA/CA Based MAC Protocol for an Efficient Packet Delivery over Multihop Wireless Mesh Network (WMN)

The Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) based Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol uses a short request-to-send (RTS) and clear-to-send (CTS) control packets prior of actual data packet transmission. The function of the CSMA/CA based MAC protocol in wireless communication is to facilitate wireless nodes (i.e. laptop, PC, smart phones and etc) to access a wireless medium efficiently. Besides, it is also efficiently manage the wireless medium when more wireless nodes involving in transmission activity in the network. This protocol allows all wireless nodes in the network to communicate between each other without collision. Since collisions may only occurred on the RTS control packets thus it can reduce the actual data collision on the medium. The RTS/CTS control handshake provides better performance and reduce the duration of collision especially when long data packets are transmitted over wireless medium. However, even though the CSMA/CA based MAC protocol working effectively and provides better throughput performance over single hop communication but it performance degrade significantly when directly applied in multihop Wireless Mesh Network (WMN). The reason behind this poor performance is due to the inefficient packet delivery of CSMA/CA based MAC protocol in multihop network. The exchange of RTS and CTS signaling that required at each hop throughout the multihop network eventually will cause the large overheads and subsequently degrade network throughput. Therefore, in this paper, an enhancement of RTS/CTS handshake has been proposed in order reduces the signaling overheads and ultimately allows a smooth packet delivery in the multihop network without any collision. In this work, the multihop network performances are evaluated analytically in terms of throughput and overhead. It is proven that the new method of RTS/CTS handshake provides significant improvement in throughput and overhead

A review on various types of Software Defined Radios (SDRs) in radio communication

Software Defined Radio (SDR) promises to deliver a cost effective and flexible solution by implementing a wide variety of wireless protocols in software. The SDR became more popular in recent years because of its abilities to realize many applications without a lot of efforts in the integration of different component. This software based radio device allows engineers to add more features to the communication system and implement any number of different signal processing elements or protocols without changing the original system hardware and its architecture. It provides a customizable and portable communications platform for many applications, including the prototyping and realization of wireless protocols and their performances. It is also able to interface with a separate hardware module to communicate over a real channel. In this article we described and compared the various SDRs that currently has been using by the researchers to study the performance of wireless protocol. Among the SDRs that we focused in this article are USRP, SORA, Air blue, SODA, and WARP

Alleviate exposed node issues in Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) using a novel approach of Concurrent Medium Access Control (C-MAC) protocol

The importance and high growth of the communication infrastructure is clearly stated under the Malaysia Economic Transformation Programme (ETP). The most popular technology that used to provide the internet service to public is the IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n based WiFi. However, the coverage provided by the WiFi technology is only limited up to certain range. In addition, the performance of the WiFi network also will become poorer and poorer as the number of users associate with that WiFi network increases. In order to address these issues, the best topology configuration known as mesh is proposed by wireless research community. This technology is also called as Wireless Mesh Networks (WMN) and it became an emerging technology which is plays an important role in the next generation wireless communication. However, the implementation of IEEE 802.11 Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol in WMN significantly degrades the network performance due to the presence of exposed node problem. The presence of exposed nodes in WMN caused waiting delay (prevent the surrounding neighboring nodes to involve in transmission activity for entire duration of ongoing transmission) and it is subsequently leads to poor throughput achievement. The significance of this research is to investigate the cause of exposed nodes that degrade the performance of WMN and proposed a novel protocol to solve it to provide better network performance and throughput

Throughput Analysis of Energy Aware Routing Protocol for Real-Time Load Distribution in Wireless Sensor Network (WSN)

Wireless sensor network (WSNs) are self-organized systems that depend on highly distributed and scattered low cost tiny devices. These devices have some limitations such as processing capability, memory size, communication distance coverage and energy capabilities. In order to maximize the autonomy of individual nodes and indirectly the lifetime of the network, most of the research work is done on power saving techniques. Hence, we propose energy-aware load distribution technique that can provide an excellent data transfer of packets from source to destination via hop by hop basis. Therefore, by making use of the cross-layer interactions between the physical layer and the network layer thus leads to an improvement in energy efficiency of the entire network when compared with other protocols and it also improves the response time in case of network change

An Efficient Medium Access Control (MAC) Forwarding Technique for Multihop Network

The function of Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol in network communication is to efficiently facilitate the use of available channels when more nodes (i.e. laptop, PC, smart phones and etc) involving in transmission activity in the network. The protocol uses the well-known Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) mechanism to allow all nodes in the network to communicate between each other without collision. This mechanism has been standardized in IEEE 802.11 and it is proven to provide the better performance of throughput for single hop communication. The node which is uses CSMA/CA mechanism will perform a handshake (the exchange of RTS and CTS signalling packets) prior initiates any packet transmission. The handshake is very crucial in order to avoid the collision caused by simultaneously transmission to the single receiver. However, this mechanism undergoes bad throughput performance when directly implemented for multihop communication. The reason behind this poor performance is due to the inefficient forwarding in CSMA/CA mechanism which is caused larger signalling overheads. The exchange of RTS and CTS signalling that required at each hop throughout the multihop network eventually will cause the larger overheads and throughput degradation. Therefore, an efficient forwarding operation is proposed in this work to reduce the signalling overheads and ultimately allows a smooth forwarding of packet in the multihop network without any collision. In this work, the multihop network performances are evaluated analytically in terms of throughput and overhead. Through the simulation, it is proven that the proposed forwarding technique provides significant improvement in throughput and overhead

Multi Hop Transmission in IEEE 802.11 Low Rate Ad Hoc Network Using ARP-Route

Ad hoc networks are becoming more important in the modern complex environment. The ad hoc network can be used to instantly connect to the local or remote networks such as the Internet without the need of pre-existing infrastructure or centralized administration. The users of the network together will establish the infrastructure. The disadvantage of wireless communication is that it has limited range of radio transmission. Due to this, multiple network ‘hops’ are needed for one device to exchange data with another device across the network. In an ad hoc network, these devices will not only operate as a host but also as a router to forward the packets. There are varieties of routing protocols targeted for this environment that have been proposed and developed. However, most of them suffer from high overhead data traffic. The main purpose of this project is to implement the ad hoc network with the existing network protocol that had already been used in network environment which is the Address Resolution Protocol (ARP). ARP was designed to announce or find MAC addresses. The novelty of this study is that we have extended the usage of the ARP protocol to act as routing protocol in wireless ad hoc network. The ARP route provides two new operation types, ARP Forward Request and ARP Forward Reply to allow the multihop transmission using intermediate nodes to forward the request and reply. These two operation types only used the current operation codes which are ‘0x0001’ for request and ‘0x0002’ for reply. This work on the routing protocol creates a new operation code for the ARP forwarding scheme which is ‘0x000c’ for forwarding. We have successfully managed to create a multi hop transmission in an ad hoc network by using the current existing operation code for the ARP forwarding. The work scope focus only on proving that the method can be applied hence it is not necessarily to prove the effectiveness of this proposed method yet. Therefore, the outcome of the study shows that the data can be sent through multi hop transmission until it reaches the destination. The 802.11b test-bed has been configured and the ARP routing protocol has been implemented for multi hop transmission. The experiment in the open space provides the comparison of environment with obstacles and without obstacles. We manage to get more than 50% of packet receive at a place with no obstacles and more than 45% in a place with obstacles. The proof of method is shown by using several graphs namely in terms of time, packet loss and also throughput

Portable Wireless Traffic Light System (PWTLS)

A Portable Wireless Traffic Light System using a microcontroller and wireless ZigBee is the best system to control the traffic flow during the road construction or maintenance. This traffic light is designed to solve the various type of hazard which may happen to the worker, flagman and also road users during the road construction. The communication between these two traffic lights is via wireless. Due to this it can be deployed anywhere because no wire is used. This system is equipped with the safety purpose where it is equipped with motion and infrared sensor to detect and count the number of vehicles to avoid any collision. This automated system can be used 24-hours in various weather conditions. This eliminate the limited working hours when using the flagman. This system is a low cost system where it uses microcontroller to control the system

Performance Analysis On Multihop Transmission Using ARP Routing Protocol In IEEE 802.11 Ad Hoc Network

Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET) are becoming more and more important in the modern environment. It can be used instantly to connect to the local or remote network without using the pre-existing infrastructure. The mobile or user in the network can together establish the infrastructure. In order to improve the limited range of radio transmission, multiple network ‘hops’ are needed so that the communication between the mobiles can be establish. There are varieties of protocol that had been proposed for the hopping methods but most of them suffer from high overhead. This project proposed a new method of hopping protocol for IEEE 802.11b using the existing network protocol which is Address Resolution Protocol (ARP). The ARP message is used in the network to find the MAC address of the destination. This can also be done by having multi hops where the proposed method using ARP designed will make an intermediate node act as a router in order to find the destination address and forward the data successfully. In this proposed method, the data is directly passed to the intermediate node and the intermediate node will help to find the route to the destination and passed the data to the destination node. This will reduce the transmission time. From the simulation obtained, it proved that the proposed method using the ARP protocol can works well as the existing network protocol which is Ad Hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV). The simulation is composed into two types of environment which are with and without obstacles. The throughput, the packet loss and the round trip time for various distances is simulated and the results shows that the performance of the proposed method using ARP is much better compared to the AODV