A Rapid Prototyping Matlab Based Design Tool of Wireless Sensor Nodes for Healthcare Applications

Remote patient monitoring enables medical facilities and personnel to monitor patients outside of conventional clinical settings. This technology is greatly affected by the available energy sources. The limited energy supply is the bottleneck for measurement, data transmission, network connection and lifetime. Thus, efficient power consumption estimation in the early stage of the design would give the user an insight on its feasibility within medical constraints. In this paper, a power-oriented Matlab based design tool is proposed. It will help the user to make an energy aware design. In fact, it will enable him to determine the power consumption of each node based on a set of selected components, the daily routine of the patient and many other factors. It will also allow him to test multiple configurations prior to the physical implementation. This will minimize the time and financial impact of any modification. Furthermore, it will provide guidance to properly adapt the design within the requirements of the application: Choosing components, energy sources, etc. A validation is proposed via a physical implementation in order to compare the results obtained through simulation with practical measurements. Future works aim to take into account memory access operations, include several sensors operating within a network, and adapt the tool to other applications (smart buildings, environmental monitoring, etc.).