Context-aware low-energy Wi-Fi sensor networks for e-health

Typical sensor networks are formed by low-end, battery operated devices, which rely on low-energy communication technologies, such as Bluetooth, Zigbee and ANT+, due to their energy efficiency. On the other hand, sensor networks increasingly need to be connected to the Internet, which implies adaptations of the TCP/IP stack to fit such wireless technologies. These adaptations bring additional complexity and imply new hardware, thus deployments are cumbersome and sub-optimal. Conversely, Wi-Fi is ubiquitous, can be seamlessly integrated with TCP/IP, and is energy-efficient with the right configurations; yet, its usage is still uncommon in e-health scenarios. For these reasons, we argue that a TCP/IP over Wi-Fi approach should be followed in e-health sensor networks. We propose a novel cross-layer, context-aware network configuration mechanism, which monitors the user and networking contexts and optimizes the configuration of the TCP/IP protocol stack accordingly. Our approach enables seamless integration between e-health wireless sensor networks and the TCP/IP backbone, while improving energy efficiency and reliability.