Performance evaluation of ZigBee network for multi-patient cardiac monitoring in intra-hospital scenario

Abstract

This paper presents performance analysis of ZigBee network in intra-hospital environment for multi-patient cardiac monitoring. A telemedicine scenario has been proposed where ECG signals of patients in Cardiac Care Unit (CCU) are being transmitted using ZigBee network. These signals are monitored continuously at Nursing Station (NS) on compact handheld devices like Personal Digital Assistant (PDA). The low power and small size ZigBee devices have the ability to form self configuring networks (Ad-hoc network) that can extend themselves through a hospital network. Performance of the proposed Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) is evaluated for various routing protocols by varying transmission power and simulation results are obtained in terms of throughput, end to end delay, packet delivery ratio, total power consumed and network lifetime.