A wireless body sensor network system for healthcare monitoring application

A four levels hierarchy wireless body sensor network (WBSN) is proposed for monitoring healthcare applications. It is separated into communication and control systems. In the communication system, the carrier frequency used in the human body is 402 - 405 MHz as Medical Implant Communication Systems (MICS) band by FCC and the coexistent wireless communication system (2.4 / 60 GHz) was used to transmit the merged biomedical data in the higher levels of the communication system. An adaptive low power and variable resolution control systems are designed into the control system. In order to improve the performance, a communication cycle is created for synchronizing the WBSN system with pipeline control. Each sensor node consists of a micro control unit (MCU), variable sample rate generator, sensor, ADC, data encoder, 402 - 405 MHz RF transceiver, and antenna. This paper presents a WBSN system, which not only gains the benefits of more flexible, easy development, run-time reconfigurable and variable resolution, but also significantly reduces considerable power consumptions with adaptive low power design.