Implementation of a data collection mechanism in electronic triage system using wireless sensor devices

The electronic triage system developed by our research group is a wireless sensor network, constructed by electronic triage tags composed of vital sign sensors and ZigBee modules. The system assumes a network of hundreds of patients, simultaneously transmitting data to a remote sink. We have investigated the performance of a simple data collection mechanism in real scenarios, based on IEEE 802.15.4 in a ZigBee device like SunSPOT, and have examined some challenges in such scenarios. The data delivery ratio of 98% has been recorded while sending data equivalent to that of 100 devices in a triage tent scenario, where every device is one hop away from the sink. Adjustment of hello packet interval according to the scenarios has been observed to be an important factor. The results are found to be useful in adjusting parameters in our future work.