Design Issues and Implementation of Query-Driven Healthcare System Using Wireless Sensor Ad-hoc Network

Application specific design requirements for wireless sensor network have posed new challenges and need for revision of existing designs for its implementation in healthcare systems. These requirements are different from that needed for environmental, agricultural and industrial purposes. The proposed paper discusses the design issues in implementation of Query driven Healthcare monitoring system using wireless sensor network. Various MAC layers designs have been studied for their usefulness and compatibility with the requirements in the healthcare system. Topology and network layer design have also been discussed. Further the low and computational capabilities of wireless sensor nodes itself adds to the design complexity. Therefore some compromises have to be made in both the domains. We aimed to implement a healthcare system using wireless sensor node based on the above study. A hardware platform was designed for the use as wireless sensor node. In this system, a wireless sensor node attached on the human body provides ECG (Electrocardiogram) and body temperature from multiple patients in an ad-hoc network. A mote-based 3-lead ECG and body temperature monitoring system operates in wireless sensor network. Health data from multiple patients can be relayed wirelessly using multi-hop routing scheme to a base-station, following IEEE 802.15.4 standard for wireless communication. Unique id assigned to each mote is used to identify each patient in the network.