Transmission Delay of Multi-hop Heterogeneous Networks for Medical Applications

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the transmission delay in multi-hop heterogeneous wireless networks used for medical data transmission from body sensors to healthcare centers, emphasizing the importance of timely data delivery for patient monitoring.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of delays across different network paths involving ZigBee, WLAN, WiMAX, and UMTS in medical sensor data transmission.

Findings

Delay varies significantly across different network paths.

WLAN offers the lowest delay among the studied networks.

Heterogeneous networks require optimized routing for minimal latency.

Abstract

Nowadays, with increase in ageing population, Health care market keeps growing. There is a need for monitoring of Health issues. Body Area Network consists of wireless sensors attached on or inside human body for monitoring vital Health related problems e.g, Electro Cardiogram (ECG), ElectroEncephalogram (EEG), ElectronyStagmography(ENG) etc. Data is recorded by sensors and is sent towards Health care center. Due to life threatening situations, timely sending of data is essential. For data to reach Health care center, there must be a proper way of sending data through reliable connection and with minimum delay. In this paper transmission delay of different paths, through which data is sent from sensor to Health care center over heterogeneous multi-hop wireless channel is analyzed. Data of medical related diseases is sent through three different paths. In all three paths, data from sensors first reaches ZigBee, which is the common link in all three paths. After ZigBee there are three available networks, through which data is sent. Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX), Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) are connected with ZigBee. Each network (WLAN, WiMAX, UMTS) is setup according to environmental conditions, suitability of device and availability of structure for that device. Data from these networks is sent to IP-Cloud, which is further connected to Health care center. Main aim of this paper is to calculate delay of each link in each path over multihop wireless channel.