RFID enhanced wireless sensor networks for healthcare monitoring

Abstract

Becoming mature enough to be used for improving the quality of life, wireless sensor network technologies are considered as one of the key research areas in computer engineering and healthcare application industries. In-home pervasive healthcare systems provide rich contextual information and alerting mechanisms against odd conditions with continuous monitoring. This minimizes the need for caregivers and help the chronically ill and elderly to survive an independent life, besides provides quality care for the babies and little children whose both parents have to work. In this thesis, we designed an indoor monitoring environment, namely WeCare, and showed the applicability of multi-modal sensor network technologies on healthcare monitoring. Besides, we performed several simulations on the capabilities of the Video Sensor Networks for healthcare monitoring in an outdoor setting. The results exhibit that their capabilities are limited. Therefore, reducing the number of the frames carried by the network is the primary objective. For this reason, we proposed several enhancements for reducing the traffic load on the network for better performance. RFID is a very mature technology that has already been used in many areas. The RFID enhanced Video Sensor Networks reduces the network traffic load. Moreover, the proximity of the healthcare professionals who are also moving in the surveillance is also used as a frame reduction mechanism. Finally, for assuring the reporting of the emergency events in low latencies, we propose a queueing mechanism and evaluated its performance through simulations.