Experimental Evaluation of On-body Transmission Characteristics for Wireless Biosensors

Wearable health monitoring system has undergone rapid progress in recent years. Traditional wired biosensor network are inconvenient of interconnecting sensors which not only involve high maintenance costs, but also limit the movements of users. Thus, wireless technology is no doubt that it will have impacts on the health care industry. However, wireless connections are not as stable as wired connections. Many factors can reduce the reliability of wireless connections such as the power setting, surrounding environment as well as the gestures of human being. It is our goal to study how these factors affect the links quality. In this paper a prototypical sensor platform is first reported. Then we attach the sensor nodes onto the human body and observe the PRR (packet reception rate), RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indicator) and LQI (Link Quality Indication) to learn oil-body channel characteristics and communication behaviours. We hope the experiment results can help researchers construct more reliable and effective wireless biosensor networks.