Lifetime Estimation of Wireless Body Area Sensor Network for Patient Health Monitoring

Abstract

Wireless Body Area Sensor Networks (WBASN) is an emerging technology which utilizes wireless sensors to implement real-time wearable health monitoring of patients to enhance independent living. These sensors can be worn externally to monitor multiple bio-parameters (such as blood oxygen saturation (SpO2), blood pressure and heart activity) of multiple patients at a central location in the hospital. In health monitoring, the loss of critical or emergency information is a serious issue so there is a concern for quality of service which needs to be addressed. It is important to have an estimate of the time the first node will fail in order to replace or recharge the battery. A common type of failure happens when a node runs out of energy and shuts down. In this work, Monte Carlo simulation is used to determine the lifetime of WBASN. The lifetime of the WBASN is defined in this work as the duration of time until the first sensor failure due to battery depletion. A parametric model of the health care network is created with sets of random input distributions. Probabilistic analysis is used to determine the timing and distributions of nodes\u27 failures in the health monitoring network