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Evaluation of IEEE 802.15.4 for Use in Smart Home Medical Care

Abstract

The IEEE 802.15.4 wireless standard has been identified as a potential candidate to be used in smart home medical care. This undergraduate research project evaluates the performance of IEEE 802.15.4 under interference from other wireless devices that operate in the same frequency band. Specifically, we focus on two very common wireless interfering systems in typical home environments: IEEE 802.11 WLANs and microwave ovens. The measurement results give a rough indication about the mutual interference of different systems and showcase the challenges of utilizing IEEE 802.15.4 for smart home medical applications.

1. Introduction

Recently, there has been a growing interest in applying wireless technologies in medical applications. A diverse range of medical services can be supported by current wireless technologies. For example, body sensor networks can be formed by placing low-power wireless devices on or around the body, enabling long-term monitoring of physiological signs.1 The collected data can be passed onto the Internet through a PDA, a cell-phone, or a home computer. The caregivers thus have remote access to the patient’s health status. If the physical activities of patients can be monitored reliably at home and at a low cost, it will have a tremendous effect on reducing the gap between the need and the capability of the current health care systems.

Among the available wireless standards, IEEE 802.15.4 is especially promising for smart home medical care, as it was specifically designed for supporting low-power, low-cost, and low-speed ubiquitous communication. IEEE 802.15.4 operates in the 2.4GHz license-free industrial scientific and medical (ISM) band, which is shared by several other wireless networks and devices, such as IEEE 802.11 wireless local area network (WLANs), IEEE 802.15.1 wireless personal area network (WPANs), and even household microwave ovens. Wireless monitoring system at home using IEEE 802.15.4 standard will unfortunately face interference from these devices. Therefore, using IEEE 802.15.4 for smart home healthcare faces special challenges as most medical monitoring applications require high reliability in data collection.

The objective of our undergraduate research project is to perform a measurement study on the interference that IEEE 802.15.4 devices experience from other wireless devices that operate in the same frequency band. Specifically, we focus on two very common wireless interfering systems in a typical home environment: IEEE 802.11 WLANs and microwave ovens. The measurement results give a rough indication on the mutual interference of different systems and showcase the challenges of utilizing IEEE 802.15.4 for smart home medical applications.

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 gives a description of the IEEE 802.15.4 standard and its coexistence with other wireless signals. Section 3 presents our measurement study, including the selection of IEEE 802.15.4 wireless devices, the measurement method, and the measurement results. Section 4 summarizes the project and concludes this paper.

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Chen, C., & Pomalaza-Ráez, C., & Oo, M. (2009, June), Evaluation Of Ieee 802.15.4 For Use In Smart Home Medical Care Paper presented at 2009 Annual Conference & Exposition, Austin, Texas. 10.18260/1-2--4711