IEEE 802.15.4 ZigBee-Based Wireless Sensor Network in Medical Application

As a new and promising technology, wireless sensor networks (WSN) plays an essential part in a large number of modern applications. Wireless Sensor Networks comprised of small, simple, and inexpensive wireless devices – the so-called sensor nodes. ZigBee technology provides the framework required to support wireless networks and fills the gap between the IEEE 802.11 WiFi and IEEE 802.15 Bluetooth standards in terms of transmission range and data rates. Generally ZigBee classified as a low-rate wireless personal area network (LR-WPAN) technology. This paper concerns with the use of WSN in one of many applications which it is patient monitoring. It performs patient monitoring system using ZigBee WSN. The modeled system consists of number of wards, each ward had number of sensors for each patient. Each sensor node represented with ZigBee end device that transmit the traffic to the master node which it is ZigBee coordinator. Then, The information can be accessed by the doctor by connecting the system through Ethernet LAN to the server. This simulation study was done using OPNET modeler V14.5. This paper study the performance of the modeled system in terms of delay, throughput, traffic received and other parameters that could be taken to study the performance of the modeled system if the number of patients was increased, the effect of increasing master nodes and the existence of router. The results showed that single coordinator (master node) system cause more delay, throughput than multiple coordinators system and the existence of router cause additional delay to the system. ZigBee based WSN for patient monitoring application resulted in online treatment, history as a database to lead the doctor in order to give proper instructions to the patient