EnViBo: Embedded network for vital sign and Biomedical Signal Monitoring

Abstract

Ambulatory monitoring of vital sign and biomedical signals covers a wide spectrum of applications in different contexts nowadays and has been a research topic during the last decade. The plethora of IEEE 802.X communication standards, favors greatly the development of wireless sensor networks ranging from body-area to wide-area coverage. The use of gateways to connect wireless networks with infrastructure networks increase the range of coverage of monitoring applications, and allows getting data remotely through interfaces running on devices like desktop computers, laptops, tablets and smartphones. We present a monitoring platform called EnViBo which is based on a three level architecture; this platform integrates sensor nodes that use moderate-cost elements and Microchip's IEEE 802.15.4-based royaltie-free protocol named MiWi P2P for communications. The progresses in fields like embedded systems, energy harvesting solutions, microelectromechanical systems and wearable sensors, allows creating applications supported by EnViBo platform which can be both cost and operationally effective.