IoT-based health monitoring via LoRaWAN

Abstract

In this paper, we present a new loT-based health monitoring approach in which collected medical sensor data is sent to an analysis module via low-cost, low-power and secure communication links provided by a LoRaWAN network infrastructure. We mainly focus on monitoring blood pressure, glucose and temperature in rural areas where cellular network coverage is either absent or does not allow data transmission. The main objective is to reduce the burden of long trips for people living in these areas to visit healthcare facilities, while minimizing the communication cost. Several experiments have been conducted to evaluate the area covered by the LoRa network and the power consumption of our system. The results indicate that the average area covered is around 33 km2 when the LoRa Gateway is placed outdoor on a 12 meter altitude. Moreover, the results demonstrate that the power consumption of our monitoring system is at least ten times lower than other long range cellular solutions, such as GPRS/3G/4G.