Improvements to body area networks

Abstract

A method of operating a wireless sensor network having a plurality of network devices (11E, 13) including sensors for monitoring a plurality of parameters, and a coordinator (10) for communicating with the network devices either directly in a star protocol or indirectly in a peer-to- peer protocol, the method comprising: arranging the coordinator (10) for communication over a low-priority link with at least a subset of said network devices; gathering sensor data by sensors of the network devices and transferring the data to the coordinator; detecting existence of an emergency state with respect to at least one of the network devices (11E); establishing a high-priority link with said at least one of the devices (11E) in the emergency state, said high-priority link having higher priority for network resources than said low-priority link; and where said one device is acting as a relay for low-priority links with other devices (13), maintaining, modifying or dropping those low-priority links in dependence upon whether or not the other devices are in emergency, a level of congestion or QoS of the high-priority link, and / or the electrical power available to said one (11E) of the devices. The method may be applied, for example, to monitoring of patients in a hospital using MBANs operating in accordance with IEEE 802.15.6.

Description

technical field [0001] The present invention relates to wireless sensor networks including personal area networks, and particularly, but not exclusively, to body area networks including wireless communicating sensors disposed on, around, or implanted in a human or animal body. Background technique [0002] Various types of wireless sensor networks have been proposed. Among others, so-called Body Area Networks or BANs are examples of Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPANs) for transmitting information over relatively short distances. Unlike a wireless local area network (WLAN), a connection implemented via a WPAN involves very little or no infrastructure. This feature allows small, power efficient, inexpensive solutions for a wide range of devices. Of particular interest is the possibility of a medical BAN (MBAN) that uses sensors to monitor the status of one or more patients. A BAN primarily utilized for feeding sensed data to data sinks is an example of a wireless sensor...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

Current IEEE standards such as IEEE 802.15.3 and IEEE 802.15.4 do not include adequate traffic congestion management mechanisms for wireless medical BAN / WSN

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