Deployment of wireless sensor networks for biomedical applications

Biomedical wireless sensor networks are a key technology to enable the development of new healthcare services and/or applications, reducing costs and improving the citizen's quality of life. However, since they deal with health data, such networks should implement mechanisms to enforce high levels of quality of service. In most cases, the sensor nodes that form such networks are small and battery powered, and these extra quality of service mechanisms mean significant lifetime reduction due to the extra energy consumption. The network lifetime is thus a relevant feature to ensure the quality of service requirements. In order to maximise the network lifetime and its ability to offer the required quality of service new strategies are needed to increase the energy efficiency and balance in the network. The focus of this work is the use of the remaining energy in each node combined with information on the reliability of the wireless links, as a metric to form reliable and energy-aware routes throughout the network. This paper presents and discusses an implementation of a lifetime-extending methodology based on energy-aware routing and relay nodes simulated for three different logical topologies. Our conclusion is that such methodology may increase the network lifetime an average of 45%.