Patient monitoring using ad hoc wireless networks: reliability and power management

In the health care domain, a major challenge is how to provide better health care services to an increasing number of people using limited financial and human resources. Wireless patient monitoring has the potential to support these multiple and conflicting requirements. However, the current quality and reliability of patient monitoring have not been very satisfactory due to the unpredictable and spotty coverage of infrastructure-oriented wireless networks. Ad hoc wireless networks can be formed among mobile and wearable patient-monitoring devices for improving the coverage of patient monitoring when infrastructure-oriented networks are not accessible. In this article, we provide support for reliable wireless patient monitoring by presenting several protocols for power management of devices, assisted power control, and sleep strategy. The performance results show that high reliability of message delivery can be obtained while maintaining a level of power conservation.