Transmission Power Control in Body Area Sensor Networks for Healthcare Monitoring

This paper investigates the opportunities and challenges in the use of dynamic radio transmit power control for prolonging the lifetime of body-wearable sensor devices used in continuous health monitoring. We first present extensive empirical evidence that the wireless link quality can change rapidl...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE journal on selected areas in communications 2009-01, Vol.27 (1), p.37-48
Main Authors: Shuo Xiao, Dhamdhere, A., Sivaraman, V., Burdett, A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Body area networks
Body Area Sensor Network
Devices
Dynamics
Energy transmission
Feedback
Guidelines
Healthcare Monitoring
Links
Medical services
Monitoring
Networks
Platforms
Power control
Studies
Transmission Power Control
Wireless sensor networks
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Summary:This paper investigates the opportunities and challenges in the use of dynamic radio transmit power control for prolonging the lifetime of body-wearable sensor devices used in continuous health monitoring. We first present extensive empirical evidence that the wireless link quality can change rapidly in body area networks, and a fixed transmit power results in either wasted energy (when the link is good) or low reliability (when the link is bad). We quantify the potential gains of dynamic power control in body-worn devices by benchmarking off-line the energy savings achievable for a given level of reliability.We then propose a class of schemes feasible for practical implementation that adapt transmit power in real-time based on feedback information from the receiver. We profile their performance against the offline benchmark, and provide guidelines on how the parameters can be tuned to achieve the desired trade-off between energy savings and reliability within the chosen operating environment. Finally, we implement and profile our scheme on a MicaZ mote based platform, and also report preliminary results from the ultra-low-power integrated healthcare monitoring platform we are developing at Toumaz Technology.
ISSN:0733-8716
1558-0008
DOI:10.1109/JSAC.2009.090105