Cooperative Body-Worn Sensor Network for Efficient Healthcare and Activity Monitoring Applications

Abstract

Body Sensor Networks are an interesting emerging application to improve healthcare and the quality of life monitoring. In this work, we compare the performances of multi-hop cooperative and single-hop networks with real-world sensor networks based on Zigbee technology. The network reliability, the data flow rate, the packet delivery ratio and the energy consumption are included as performances criteria. It is shown experimentally that the cooperative approach can provide a network more robust to link losses at the expenses of a lower bit rate and higher energy consumption. Specifically, for a packet delivery ratio >0.9, the cooperative scheme can provide the network with a link gain up to 14 dB traded off with an energy demand up to 30.7% higher and a data flow rate about 20% lower than a single-hop system. This work is a first exercise step in assessing reliability and life time trade-off with real-world platforms for body area sensor networks.

Keywords: Body-worn Sensors, Cooperative Topology, Energy Efficiency, Healthcare Monitoring Systems

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe100282