Performance Analysis of Zigbee Based Wireless Sensor Network for Remote Patient Monitoring

Constant monitoring of patient´s health is essential to provide appropriate healthcare. With advances in electronic circuit miniaturization and micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS), wearable sensor nodes can be used to acquire physiological signals from patient´s body and transmit them to a remote location which can be accessed by the doctors. Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are becoming an integral part of healthcare systems, as they can overcome the need for patients to be stationary while their vital parameters are being checked. In this paper we have studied and analyzed the effect of variation in senor node density, communication duration and data transmission rate on network performance in terms of Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR), throughput, average network delay and energy consumed. Simulations are carried out using ns2.34. Obtained network performance is analyzed in comparison with the required performance of various physiological signals used for patient health monitoring. Accomplished results provide direction to choose appropriate node density, data transmission rate and communication duration for required performance while establishing Zigbee sensor based patient monitoring system in practical.