Experimental analysis of IEEE 802.15.4 for on/off body communications

Author

Amini, Navid ; Xu, Wenyao ; Li, Zhinan ; Huang, Ming-Chun ; Sarrafzadeh, Majid

Author_Institution

Wireless Health Inst., UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA

fYear

2011

fDate

11-14 Sept. 2011

Firstpage

2138

Lastpage

2142

Abstract

We target body-wearable sensor networks, in which sensor nodes are strategically placed on the human body and the wireless communications are conducted on/off the surface of the body. The results, obtained by performing multiple experiments in outdoor environments, are presented. A single on body transmitter communicates with a single receiver node, which is located on the body or off the body at various distances. Sensor nodes utilized in our experiments are equipped with XBee and XBee Pro wireless modules for on body and off body communications, respectively. The focus of our work is to observe how the Received Signal Strength (RSS) and the Packet Reception Rate (PRR) vary as we change the communication distance and transmission power level. Our experimental results can be used to perform transmission power control with high precision in order not to exceed a certain packet error rate.

Keywords

Zigbee; body area networks; body sensor networks; packet radio networks; IEEE 802.15.4; XBee Pro wireless modules; body transmitter; body-wearable sensor networks; communication distance; human body; on/off body communications; packet error rate; packet reception rate; received signal strength; sensor nodes; single receiver node; transmission power control; transmission power level; wireless communication; IEEE 802.15 Standards; Monitoring; Radio transmitters; Receivers; Sensitivity; Wireless communication; Wireless sensor networks; Zigbee; body-wearable sensor networks; received signal strenth; transmission power control;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Personal Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC), 2011 IEEE 22nd International Symposium on

Conference_Location

Toronto, ON

ISSN

pending

Print_ISBN

978-1-4577-1346-0

Electronic_ISBN

pending

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PIMRC.2011.6139893

Filename

6139893