Multi-User ECG Monitoring System based on IEEE Standard 802.15.6

Wearable devices are an enabling technology for pervasive and continuous physiological monitoring of health conditions. In this paper the aim is to provide continuous health monitor for a group of people living in the same place. Monitoring examples range from health conditions of elderly people in a nursing or rest home, to physical conditions of people doing physical activity in a gym or a swimming pool. We consider the implementation of IEEE Standard 802.15.6, focusing on a real time cardiac activity monitoring in a rest home scenario, but a variety of application with similar features can also be considered. We investigate the effect of different parameters, such as the duration of the superframe and its fields, the user priority (UP) of the nodes and packet payload size.Through numerical simulation we analyze network configurations with the aim of providing quality of service (QoS) support to the highest number of nodes. The considered set up is also able to support a sufficiently high number of nodes for the proposed application also in regards of quality of experience (QoE).The CSMA/CA protocol allows to handle mobility with a suitable degree of flexibility, so that monitored subjects need not be restricted in their movement. Multiple collection nodes must be employed when larger areas have to be covered and in this case dealing with mobility becomes more complex, but this analysis is beyond the scope of this paper.