Health monitoring systems: An energy efficient data collection technique in wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Now a days the wireless sensor networks are using in wide variety of applications. The wireless sensor nodes are battery powered in most of the applications especially in health monitoring systems. Usage of these battery powered wireless sensor nodes with minimal energy consumption is the bottleneck in wireless sensor network based health monitoring systems. Deployment of large number of these battery powered sensor nodes in an environment and maintaining the wireless sensor network for long lifetime is a critical task. The lifetime of wireless sensor networks is increased by using several power saving techniques for data collection and processing. In this work, we present a novel cluster based vital health data collection, processing and routing. The wide wireless sensor network covered by a base station is partitioned into several clusters with cluster head routing data to/from base station. Each cluster consisting of several body area networks with body heads, which are responsible for routing data to/from cluster head. Thus, creation of cluster heads and body heads and assigning special tasks to cluster heads and body heads can greatly contribute to overall system scalability, lifetime, and energy efficiency. With this system architecture, we can greatly minimize the average power consumed by a wireless sensor network.