A Wearable Internet of Things Mote with Bare Metal 6LoWPAN Protocol for Pervasive Healthcare

The current trend of population growth demands a more flexible and readily available healthcare services compared to traditional centralized approach. Mobile and wearable devices that have sensing and Internet access capabilities offer the opportunity of changing how medical services are delivered to the patients. The emergence of the Internet of Things and pervasive healthcare paradigms requires seamless and efficient information flow from patients´ body area networks (BANs) to the wider Internet. This brings forward the challenges of integration of various isolated wireless sensor networks (WSNs) with Internet. This paper addresses the use of the IPv6 over Low power Wireless Personal Area Networks (6LoWPAN) protocol for integrating small scale BANs for vital signs monitoring to the wider Internet. A bare metal implementation of 6LoWPAN is made to satisfy the strict memory and processing power constraints of an ultra-low power embedded mote. An edge router and router stack of the 6LoWPAN are designed to demonstrate a full IPv6 accessibility for an embedded BAN supporting tree topology. The protocol stacks of the edge router and router are validated through successful connectivity tests and packet drop tests. The single-hop communication latency is also measured to give an indication of the overheads introduced by the stack.