Title: Performance assessment of a new intra-mobility solution for healthcare wireless sensor networks

Authors: J.M.L.P. Caldeira; J.J.P.C. Rodrigues; M. Gilg; P. Lorenz

Addresses: Instituto de Telecomunicações, University of Beira Interior, Polytechnic Institute of Castelo Branco, Rua Marquês D'Ávila e Bolama, 6201-001 Covilhã, Portugal ' Instituto de Telecomunicações, Department of Informatics, University of Beira Interior, Rua Marquês D'Ávila e Bolama, 6201-001 Covilhã, Portugal ' Instituts Universitaires de Technologie, University of Haute Alsace, 34 rue du Grillenbreit – BAT F – BP 50568, 68008 Colmar, France ' Instituts Universitaires de Technologie, University of Haute Alsace, 34 rue du Grillenbreit – BAT F – BP 50568, 68008 Colmar, France

Abstract: The use of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) in healthcare is a key issue. These technologies can improve the way patients are monitored in an infirmary or a hospital. The healthcare WSNs (HWSNs) assume the use of WSNs for health support, collecting and send patients' health parameters wirelessly to remote monitoring systems. These applications bring many new challenges to traditional WSNs. These challenges include the continuous support connectivity to mobile nodes. The ability to let patients moving around when hospitalised is important to promote their quality of life. Managing the transitions of access points' attachment when a node moves across several coverage areas is on top of research topics in HWSNs. This paper studies the performance of a new handover mechanism to support intra-mobility of nodes for HWSN, called Hand4MAC. The evaluation is performed through a laboratory testbed and it was compared to the most used handover solutions. The results shown that Hand4MAC is more efficient in number of exchanged messages and it could ensure almost continuous connection to the nodes.

Keywords: HWSNs; healthcare WSNs; wireless sensor networks; wireless networks; handover; intra-mobility; mobility support; patient monitoring; continuous connectivity; healthcare technology; e-healthcare; electronic healthcare.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAHUC.2014.059903

International Journal of Ad Hoc and Ubiquitous Computing, 2014 Vol.15 No.1/2/3, pp.215 - 226

Received: 24 Dec 2012
Accepted: 29 Apr 2013
Published online: 19 Mar 2014 *

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