Design and Implementation of a Wireless Sensor Network for Health Monitoring

The current health care system faces new challenge: increasing aging population, growing health cost, and mobile life. We present a kind of network architecture for Health Care Monitoring. This network named HCMNet integrates isolated wireless sensor networks (WSNs) into internet. Each WSN composed of health care sensors and one mesh router operates as a mobile ad-hoc network. Sensors can move in the range of WSNs, while mesh router is deployed as a coordinator which manages WSN other than forwards data. All sensing data and software are stored in back-end server. The database inquiry, data analysis and the system management are processed on the web page of server. A testbed is constructed on Sun SPOT platform with IEEE 802.15.4 physical layer and MAC Layer. The experiment results show that the prototype HCMNet can provide cost effective, continual, supervised, and ambulatory health monitoring to patients and residents.