Experimental analysis on radio transmission and localization of a Zigbee-based wireless healthcare monitoring platform

Zigbee-compliant wireless sensor network (WSN) platforms using TI CC2430 or CC2431 chipsets with Z-stack were widely used in hospitals, sanatoriums and other public applications. In this paper, we created a wireless healthcare monitoring platform, and then evaluated two key performance-related issues in regard to this platform, i.e. the radio transmission issue and the radio localization issue. Experimental results suggested that radio interferences could be minimized by choosing suitable Zigbee communication channel and frame length, and the localization service provided by the CC2431 modules was capable of tracking the geographical location with averaging localization errors being less than 2 m. We also presented some tentative suggestions for future development.