Indigenous mote design for wireless patient monitoring station

Abstract

A WSN is a constellation of spatially dispersed independent sensors that can collaborate among themselves and a central monitoring station (CMS) to observe physical or environmental phenomena. A sensor node, also known as a mote, is a node in a WSN that can perform some processing, acquire sensory data and communicate with other nodes in the network. Employing a wireless monitoring system will allow remote supervision, simultaneous supervision of multiple patients over a single server and better mobility and less clutter in the intensive care units (ICU). Since the monitoring system is wireless, the server can be kept out of the vicinity of the patient. This will free the fuddle caused by monitoring instruments in the ICUs. In this paper we propose to use a WSN mote with very basic functions. For instance, the sensor for monitoring pulse can be interfaced with a basic mote platform which will then be a part of the active wireless sensor network in the ICU with a unique mote ID enabling discrete monitoring over a remote server. Motes are available only in developed nations which are very generic and have many unwanted functionalities which warrants for the very high cost when shipped to developing nations like India. We propose an indigenous design specifically crafted for medical applications that do away with all the unwanted functionalities and hence would be much more affordable and hence employable in economically confined applications