An Optimized Cross-Layer Protocol For Patient Confined Wireless Network

Abstract

Mobility and freedom are two driving forces for research in wireless sensor networks. Recent advances in hardware development, offering low-cost, low-power sensor devices open up for an exciting research field where only the imagination can stop us from developing exiting and revolutionary applications. In the medical field sensor networks can be used to remotely monitor physiological parameters such as heartbeat or blood pressure or patients, and report to the hospital when some parameters are altered. This is a huge research field, and much research will be done in the coming years to cope with recently unsolved issues. This Master's thesis will present and describe a customized, tailor-made, and optimized cross-layer implementation of a communication protocol for medical purposes. The research platform is based on the IEEE802.15.4/ZigBee protocol that is widely popular for sensor networks applications. ZigBee based wireless sensor network finds interesting applications in medicine, and its flexibility, low cost, small hardware and low power consumption are promising features that could effectively serve medical applications. Extended testing was necessary to address the implementation issues as well as finding optimization opportunities. The protocol has several exiting features, and experiments so far reveal very promising results.