Medical Data Compression and Transmission in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

A wireless ad hoc network (WANET) is a type of wireless network aimed to be deployed in a disaster area in order to collect data of patients and improve medical facilities. The WANETs are composed of several small nodes scattered in the disaster area. The nodes are capable of sending (wirelessly) the collected medical data to the base stations. The limited battery power of nodes and the transmission of huge medical data require an energy efficient approach to preserve the quality of service of WANETs. To address this issue, we propose an optimization-based medical data compression technique, which is robust to transmission errors. We propose a fuzzy-logic-based route selection technique to deliver the compressed data that maximizes the lifetime of WANETs. The technique is fully distributed and does not use any geographical/location information. We demonstrate the utility of the proposed work with simulation results. The results show that the proposed work effectively maintains connectivity of WANETs and prolongs network lifetime.