A Body Sensor Network Platform for In-home Health Monitoring Application

A specially-designed wireless BSN (body sensor network) platform was proposed for in-home health monitoring applications. The BSN platform was composed of BSN nodes and a base-station. The BSN nodes with advantages of small size and low power consumption were attached on human body to collect physiological data, and transmit wirelessly to the base-station which served as a master node within a BSN. The BSN node was consisted of a BSN node board, a 915 MHz micro-strip loop antenna board, and a battery board with a charger IC. All the three boards were fabricated in a uniform form factor which was 23 mm in diameter, and they were stacked and encapsulated in a plastic box. The software architecture was designed towards an efficient self-contained baseband protocol to network several BSN modules. The pocket loss rate of the platform was measured, and the results demonstrated that its performance was very well. The BSN platform could also be easily extended with more functionality for pervasive healthcare, telemedicine, and wearable medical devices.