ZigBee based wireless sensor networks and their use in medical and health care domain

Abstract

Smart and affordable medical and health care have been always described as a dream coming true despite the ever growing cost of providing such care services to hospitals and nursing homes. Pervasive sensing and wireless networking technology possess the potential to the provisions of quality medical or health care with relatively lower cost. One of achievements that hold the promise is the wireless sensor networks (WSNs) technology, in particular, the medical wireless sensor networks. Medical wireless sensor networks (WSNs) typically include Wireless Body Area Networks(WBANs), and Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPANs). In virtue of low communication range(≤ 250m) and low data transmission rate(250bps), WPANs have a promising prospect of being deployed in the medical and health care domains. In this paper, we deliberate the viability and the effectiveness of exploiting a modified Opnet-ZB simulation model to study the functionality of WPANs that would be deployed in the domain of medical and health care. Based on the Opnet-ZB simulation model, we construct two types of WPANs and explore the feasibility of the WPANs deployment in two scenarios.