The design of dual radio ZigBee homecare gateway for remote patient monitoring

A Dual Radio ZigBee Homecare Gateway (DRZHG) has been proposed and implemented to support remote patient monitoring. The novelty of DR-ZHG is two-fold. Firstly, it increases the transmission data rate of ZigBee. The Dual Radio ZigBee design furnishes low latency and highly accurate telehealth service at home. Secondly, the zero-configuration design of the DR-ZHG offers the most user friendly telehealth service to elderly people and long-terms patients. Analysis reveals that, for streaming data devices, the network depth should be confined to three (3) in a ZigBee tree network. As for polling data devices, it is analyzed that nine (9) sensors can be supported in a single hop communication. To align with the maximum hop count of three (3) for streaming devices, seven (7) polling devices can be accommodated. In summary, the developed DR-ZHG supports seven (7) polling service sensors and one (1) streaming service senor. Such a gateway meets the general latency standard of 2s for telemedicine services as stipulated by U.S. NIST.