Wireless biomedical sensor network for home-based healthcare monitoring system

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) consists of sensor nodes that interact with each other to collectively monitor environmental or physical conditions at different location for the intended user. One of its potential deployment is for the form of Wireless Biomedical Sensor Network (WBSN) to measure physiological signals. The WBSN applications would allow the medical practitioners to continuously monitor and update the status of a patient from a far. This project focuses on the development of a WBSN platform for home-based healthcare monitoring over WBSN which complies with IEEE 802.15.4 standard and operates in 2.4 GHz ISM (industrial, scientific and medical) band. The initial state of WBSN development is the design of the wireless sensor node called TelG. The main feature of TelG include low power consumption, wearable, flexible and small size. It is then embedded with a self-built operating system called WiseOS to support customized operation. The home-based healthcare monitoring system is able to operate via web-based with the capability multi-hop real-time communication using Lightweight Real-time Load Distribution (LRTLD) routing protocol for device discovery. The system is also capable of displaying patients data which include electrocardiogram (ECG), pulse rate and temperature. The performance of the TelG is tested experimentally and found to be comparable with other sensor nodes in the market. The node can achieve packet reception rate (PRR) above 80% for a distance of up to 6 meters and also for up to 3 hops at different transmission rates. In addition, the LRTLD routing protocol takes less than 1 millisecond to obtain information on the forwarding node. It is also observed that the packet transmission rate does not affect the end-to-end delay if the range of communication is less than 10 m. The WBSN is tested in a real experimental test bed and are able to successfully provide ECG, pulse rate and temperature data for remote monitoring of patient at home from the hospital.