Feasibility and performance evaluation of a 6LoWPAN‐enabled platform for ubiquitous healthcare monitoring

Technology has revolutionized medical practices by enabling more convenient and non‐intrusive monitoring of patient's health, leading to next generation ubiquitous healthcare (u‐healthcare). The exploitation of the Internet protocol version 6 addressing space along with the miniaturization of electronic devices has fostered providing interoperability and connectivity of wearable sensor devices in wireless body area networks to the Internet of Things. In this paper, we propose to integrate the IPv6 over low power wireless personal area network (6LoWPAN) to the u‐healthcare monitoring system architecture. The main objective is to study the feasibility of the 6LoWPAN‐enabled platform in real‐world scenarios dealing with medical data. The performance evaluation of this platform is carried out initially through simulations using OMNet++ and then supported by an experimental study using sensor motes and a customized micro‐computing unit. Performance metrics such as throughput, end‐to‐end delay, packet error rate, and energy consumption are investigated under acute health conditions, where patient's health information has to be sent continuously and at maximum rate to the care provider. The obtained results show that the proposed 6LoWPAN solution fulfills the main quality of service requirements of u‐healthcare applications. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Robust medical ad hoc sensor networks (MASN) with wavelet-based ECG data mining

Heart disease is the top elder killer in the world. To reduce the healthcare cost, it is a necessary tendency to deploy self-organized, wireless heart disease monitoring hardware/software systems. Telemedicine platform based on ad hoc interconnection of tiny ECG sensors, called medical ad hoc sensor networks (MASN), can provide a promising approach for performing low-cost, real-time, remote cardiac patient monitoring at any time. The contribution of this research is the design of a practical MASN hardware/software platform to perform real-time healthcare data collections. It has reliable, cluster-based communication scheme. Due to the radio broadcasting nature of wireless networks, a MASN has the risk of being attacked. This research also designs a low overhead medical security scheme to achieve confidential ECG data transmission in the wireless medium. Finally, our MASN system has the capability of keeping track of cardiac patients and extracting ECG features based on wavelet theories. Our MASN platform is very useful to practical medical monitoring applications.     

Wireless technologies for telemedicine

Wireless telemedicine is a new and evolving area in telemedical and telecare systems. Healthcare personnel require realtime access to accurate patient data, including clinical histories, treatments, medication, tests, laboratory results and insurance information. With large-scale wireless networks and mobile computing solutions, such as cellular 3G, Wi-Fi mesh and WiMAX, healthcare personnal can tap into vital information anywhere and at any time within the healthcare networks. The recent introduction of pervasive computing, consisting of radio frequency identification (RFID), Bluetooth, ZigBee, and wireless sensor networks, further extends the potential for exploitation of wireless telecommunications and its integration into new mobile healthcare delivery systems. In this paper, snapshots of current uses and future trends of various wireless communications in the healthcare domain are highlighted. Special attention is given to the challenges of a telemedicine environment equipped with different wireless technologies and how the resulting issues might be addressed in medical services integration to provide flexible, convenient and economical medical monitoring, consultation and healthcare.     

Network Information Security Data Protection Based on Data Encryption Technology

Today Radio Frequency Identification systems (RFID) are one of the most usable automated wireless identification technologies in the internet of things. Identification systems can exchange data remotely by communicating between a tag and a reader with sending radio waves. The main challenge of identification systems with radiofrequency in a dense RFID network is the collision, which occurs when readers are located in each other's interference range and start reading tags simultaneously. With these collisions happening, readers cannot read all the tags around them in the efficient time durations. In this research, using a distributed method and the channel listening technique, readers select a time interval to take the control channel by the Geometric Probability Distribution Function. Also, by measuring the signal strength from neighboring readers and sharing tag information, there will be an increase in the throughput of identification systems through radio waves while avoiding all kinds of collisions in the control channel. Extensive results show that the proposed method has better throughput and has less average waiting time.

     

Simulations and experiments for optimal deployment of an RFID‐based location‐aware system

The proliferation of communication and mobile computing devices and local‐area wireless networks has cultivated a growing interest in location‐aware systems and services. An essential problem in location‐aware computing is the determination of physical locations. RFID technologies are gaining much attention, as they are attractive solutions to indoor localization in many healthcare applications. In this paper, we propose a new indoor localization methodology that aims to deploying RFID technologies in achieving accurate location‐aware undertakings with real‐time computation. The proposed algorithm introduces means to improve the accuracy of the received RF signals. Optimal settings for the parameters in terms of reader and reference tag properties were investigated through simulations and experiments. The experimental results indicate that our indoor localization methodology is promising in applications that require fast installation, low cost and high accuracy. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Low‐cost wireless sensor networks for remote cardiac patients monitoring applications

One of today's most pressing matters in medical care is response time to patients in need. Scope of this research is to suggest a solution that would help reduce response time in emergency situations utilizing technologies of wireless sensor networks. The enhanced power efficiency, minimized production cost, condensed physical layout, and reduced wired connections present a much more proficient and simplified approach to the continuous monitoring of patients' physiological status. The proposed sensor network system is composed of wearable vital sign sensors and a workstation monitor. The wearable platforms are to be distributed to patients of concern. The wearable platforms can provide continuous electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring by measuring electrical potentials between various points of the body using a galvanometer. They will then relay the ECG signals wirelessly to the workstation monitor. In addition to displaying the data, the workstation will also perform signal wavelet transformation for ECG characteristic extractions. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

In Vivo Self‐Powered Wireless Transmission Using Biocompatible Flexible Energy Harvesters

Additional surgeries for implantable biomedical devices are inevitable to replace discharged batteries, but repeated surgeries can be a risk to patients, causing bleeding, inflammation, and infection. Therefore, developing self‐powered implantable devices is essential to reduce the patient's physical/psychological pain and financial burden. Although wireless communication plays a critical role in implantable biomedical devices that contain the function of data transmitting, it has never been integrated with in vivo piezoelectric self‐powered system due to its high‐level power consumption (microwatt‐scale). Here, wireless communication, which is essential for a ubiquitous healthcare system, is successfully driven with in vivo energy harvesting enabled by high‐performance single‐crystalline (1 ? x )Pb(Mg_1/3Nb_2/3)O₃?(x )Pb(Zr,Ti)O₃ (PMN‐PZT). The PMN‐PZT energy harvester generates an open‐circuit voltage of 17.8 V and a short‐circuit current of 1.74 µA from porcine heartbeats, which are greater by a factor of 4.45 and 17.5 than those of previously reported in vivo piezoelectric energy harvesting. The energy harvester exhibits excellent biocompatibility, which implies the possibility for applying the device to biomedical applications.     

Security analysis of an ultra‐lightweight RFID authentication protocol for m‐commerce

Nowadays, many people perform their commercial activities, such as electronic payment and electronic banking, through their mobile phones. Mobile commerce (m‐commerce) refers to manipulating electronic commerce (e‐commerce) by using mobile devices and wireless networks. Radio‐frequency identification (RFID) is a technology which can be employed to complete payment functions on m‐commerce. As an RFID subsystem is applied in m‐commerce and supply chains, the related security concerns are very important. Recently, Fan et al. have proposed an ultra‐lightweight RFID authentication scheme for m‐commerce (ULRAS) and claimed that their protocol is efficient enough and provides a high level of security. In this paper, we show that their protocol is vulnerable to secret disclosure and reader impersonation attacks. Finally, we improve it to a protocol that is resistant to the attacks presented in this paper and the other known attacks in the context of RFID authentication. We further analyze the security of the improved protocol through the Burrows–Abadi–Needham logic (BAN‐logic). Moreover, our proposed improvement does not impose any additional workload on the RFID tag.     

A smartphone‐based U‐Healthcare system for real‐time monitoring of acute myocardial infarction

In recent years, medical service has been evolving from systems designed around centralized hospitals to Ubiquitous Healthcare (U‐Healthcare). U‐Healthcare system can facilitate real‐time monitoring of patient states, and can provide medical checkups and management whenever and wherever the medical staff deems necessary. U‐Healthcare services can provide chronic condition monitoring in the early stages of diseases and help execute decisive medical action in emergencies. However, thus far, the application of U‐Healthcare systems has been limited to diseases such as obesity, diabetes, etc. Acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is among the most critical chronic diseases and requires early detection and treatment. In this paper, we propose an AMI diagnostic software technique and protocol that can support real‐time communication between the patient and medical personnel. Our monitoring and diagnostic system has been developed using a protocol based on ISO/IEEE 11073. When data is transferred from the patient's smartphone to a server in hospital, the medical personnel consult the patient's biosensor data to determine the status of the relevant disease and provide appropriate medical service. The relevant information is sent back to the patient's smartphone through a wireless network, and patients can view their data in graphical format through their smartphone. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Long‐range wireless sensor networks with transmit‐only nodes and software‐defined receivers

Wireless sensor networks for environmental monitoring and agricultural applications often face Long‐range requirements at low bit rates together with a large numbers of nodes. This paper presents the design and test of a novel wireless sensor network that combines a large radio range with very low power consumption and cost. Our asymmetric sensor network uses ultra‐low‐cost 40‐MHz transmitters and a sensitive software‐defined radio receiver with multi‐channel capability. Experimental radio range measurements in two different outdoor environments demonstrate a single‐hop range of up to 1.8 km. A theoretical model for radio propagation at 40 MHz in outdoor environments is proposed and validated with the experimental measurements. The reliability and fidelity of network communication over longer periods is evaluated with a deployment for distributed temperature measurements. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of the transmit‐only low‐frequency system design approach for future environmental sensor networks. Although there have been several papers proposing the theoretical benefits of this approach, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to provide experimental validation of such claims. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Radio frequency identification: technologies,applications, and research issues

A radio frequency identification (RFID) system is a special kind of sensor network to identify an object or a person using radio frequency transmission. A typical RFID system includes transponders (tags) and interrogators (readers): tags are attached to objects/persons, and readers communicate with the tags in their transmission ranges via radio signals. RFID systems have been gaining more and more popularity in areas such as supply chain management, automated identification systems, and any place requiring identifications of products or people. RFID technology is better than barcode in many ways, and may totally replace barcode in the future if certain technologies can be achieved such as low cost and protection of personal privacy. This paper provides a technology survey of RFID systems and various RFID applications. We also discuss five critical research issues: cost control, energy efficiency, privacy issue, multiple readers' interference, and security issue. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Conception and Performance Analysis of Efficient CDMA‐Based Full‐Duplex Anti‐collision Scheme

Ultra‐high‐frequency radio‐frequency identification (UHF RFID) is widely applied in different industries. The Frame Slotted ALOHA in EPC C1G2 suffers severe collisions that limit the efficiency of tag recognition. An efficient full‐duplex anti‐collision scheme is proposed to reduce the rate of collision by coordinating the transmitting process of CDMA UWB uplink and UHF downlink. The relevant mathematical models are built to analyze the performance of the proposed scheme. Through simulation, some important findings are gained. The maximum number of identified tags in one slot is g/e (g is the number of PN codes and e is Euler's constant) when the number of tags is equal to mg (m is the number of slots). Unlike the Frame Slotted ALOHA, even if the frame size is small and the number of tags is large, there aren't too many collisions if the number of PN codes is large enough. Our approach with 7‐bit Gold codes, 15‐bit Gold codes, or 31‐bit Gold codes operates 1.4 times, 1.7 times, or 3 times faster than the CDMA Slotted ALOHA, respectively, and 14.5 times, 16.2 times, or 18.5 times faster than the EPC C1 G2 system, respectively. More than 2,000 tags can be processed within 300 ms in our approach.     

On the problems of symbol‐spaced tapped‐delay‐line models for WSSUS channels

This paper analyzes the validity and statistical behavior of symbol‐spaced tapped‐delay‐line (SSTDL) models for wide‐sense stationary uncorrelated scattering (WSSUS) mobile radio channels. SSTDL models are obtained by sampling the channel impulse response (CIR) in delay domain at a rate equal to the reciprocal of the symbol duration. They were proposed more than four decades ago as canonical channel models for band‐limited time‐variant linear (TVL) systems, and are nowadays widely in use for assessing the performance of several wireless communication systems. The applicability of these tapped‐delay‐line (TDL) models seems to be unquestionable, as they were developed in the framework of the sampling theorem. Nonetheless, we show here that SSTDL models should be used with care to model WSSUS channels, because the channel's uncorrelated scattering (US) condition might easily be violated. Furthermore, we show that SSTDL models suffer from strong limitations in emulating the channel frequency correlation function (FCF). This drawback leads to an inaccurate performance evaluation of wireless communication systems sensitive to the FCF. To cope with this problem, we present a simple solution by doubling the channel's sampling rate. The benefits of this solution are demonstrated with some exemplary simulation results. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

RFID reader collision problem: performance analysis and medium access

The RFID reader collision problem, in which an RFID reader's interrogation is interfered by other concurrent readers' transmission, is considered an important issue to reliable operation and thus to the wide‐spread deployment of RFID networks. In this paper, we present modeling and analysis of the RFID reader collision problem. We observe asymmetry between an RFID reader's and a tag's communication capabilities and develop an RFID radio model based on the asymmetry. By the model, we characterize the spatial reuse of RFID reader networks, and derive concurrent interrogation distance beyond which readers can transmit simultaneously without causing collision and the carrier sense threshold corresponding to the distance. We also examine the dual‐channel mode where available bandwidth is divided into two channels by which reader‐to‐tag communication and tag‐to‐reader communication are separated. We analyze and evaluate the performance of the dual‐channel mode in terms of spatial reuse and interrogation completion time. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

RFID sensors based on ubiquitous passive 13.56‐MHz RFID tags and complex impedance detection

Passive radio frequency identification (RFID) sensors are attractive in diverse applications where sensor performance is needed at a low cost and when battery‐free operation is critical. We developed a general approach for adapting ubiquitous and cost‐effective passive 13.56‐MHz RFID tags for diverse sensing applications. In developed RFID sensors, the complex impedance of the RFID resonant antenna is measured and correlated to physical, chemical, or biological properties of interest. In contrast to known wireless sensors, developed RFID sensors combine several measured parameters from the resonant sensor antenna with multivariate data analysis and deliver unique capability for multianalyte sensing and rejection of environmental interferences with a single sensor. Theoretical calculations and experiments in an anechoic chamber demonstrate that the developed RFID sensors are immune to common electromagnetic interferences and the sensor/reader system operates within regulated emission levels. Performance of developed RFID sensors is illustrated in measurements of toxic industrial chemicals (TICs) in air with the detection limit (DL) of 80 parts per billion and in a non‐invasive monitoring of milk spoilage. Sensors selectivity is demonstrated in the detection of different vapors with individual sensors. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A discrete‐components millimeter‐wave satellite beacon receiver for Q‐band propagation experiment

Ever increasing bandwidth requirements in satellite communications continuously push the frequency limits. Q‐ band (33 – 50 GHz) is the next frequency band to be populated; however, at these frequencies, the Earth's troposphere (weather) profoundly alters the radio propagation conditions. Therefore, in order to properly plan radio links, accurate statistical models of radio channels are necessary. These statistical models are built upon empirical data, ie, measurements, which are furthermore used to design appropriate Propagation Impairment Mitigation Techniques. The Q‐ band lacks such data, hence the statistical models are inadequate. To address this problem, we propose a cost‐effective, easy to replicate Q‐ band beacon receiver to leverage the Alphasat propagation campaign. We present a step‐by‐step implementation process of the receiver's fundamental part, a Low‐Noise Block, which translates input 39.402 GHz signal into 162 MHz output signal with a conversion gain of 52 dB. The receiver furthermore utilizes software define radio for signal processing and other data manipulation. Here, we describe the receiver implementations in great details, supplementing the crucial parts with laboratory validation results. Finally, we show 2 example datasets, showing usual data obtained during heavy showers and on a quiet day, respectively.     

Dual‐collaborative DoS/DDoS mitigation approach in information‐centric mobile Internet

The amount of wireless traffic is increasing at an overwhelming speed. Information‐centric networking (ICN) has been proposed as a promising Future Internet Architecture, which can reduce network traffic by putting data objects toward the edge. It is expected that in information‐centric mobile Internet (ICMI), the wireless traffic can be significantly reduced. Yet, DoS/DDoS attack becomes a critical issue in ICMI by causing wireless gateway blockade. To tackle the problem, we propose a dual‐collaborative DoS/DDoS mitigation approach (DCMA) and advanced DCMA to protect wireless gateways. In the algorithm, the attackers' visiting information including international mobile equipment identity (IMEI) and data object name (DON) are analyzed jointly to accurately identify potential attackers through the collaboration between the Internet and mobile network. In addition, the attacker's behaviors are analyzed centrally, and security strategies are applied distributively throughout wireless edge through the collaboration between wireless core network (CN) and radio access network (RAN). Extensive simulations are performed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms. The results demonstrate that advanced DCMA can achieve high DDoS and attacker detection probability and small false positive probability.     

Flower pollination algorithm‐based energy‐efficient stable clustering approach for WSNs

The advances in the size, cost of deployment, and user‐friendly interface of wireless sensor devices have given rise to many wireless sensor network (WSN) applications. WSNs need to use protocols for transmitting data samples from event regions to sink through minimum cost links. Clustering is a commonly used method of data aggregation in which nodes are organized into groups to reduce energy consumption. Nonetheless, cluster head (CH) has to bear an additional load in clustering protocols to organize different activities within the cluster. Proper CH selection and load balancing using efficient routing protocol is therefore a critical aspect for WSN's long‐term operation. In this paper, a threshold‐sensitive energy‐efficient cluster‐based routing protocol based on flower pollination algorithm (FPA) is proposed to extend the network's stability period. Using FPA, multihop communication between CHs and base station is used to achieve optimal link costs for load balancing distant CHs and energy minimization. Analysis and simulation results show that the proposed algorithm significantly outperforms competitive clustering algorithms in terms of energy consumption, stability period, and system lifetime.     

一种基于新型同步算法的脉冲UWB能量检测接收器设计

在RFID和无线传感器网络等应用系统中,脉冲UWB(IR-UWB)技术的低功耗和低成本特点具有很大的优势。为了有效地降低功耗和成本,采用了一种基于能量检测,使用开关键控(OOK)调制的IR-UWB接收器,提出了一种使用能量补偿与自适应门限的新型同步与检测算法,此算法降低了接收器的能耗与硬件复杂度。通过对该接收器的仿真及用FPGA硬件实现,表明此算法降低了同步时的功耗及前导序列长度,提高了传输效率,同时保持了系统性能。测试结果表明此接收器架构能够满足在数据率10Mb/s时,功耗仅为1nJ/bit左右,具有低功耗、低复杂度的特点。     

Coexistence of OSCR‐Based IR‐UWB System with IEEE 802.11a WLAN

Impulse radio (IR) is a competitive candidate for ultra‐wideband (UWB) systems. In this letter, we evaluated the coexistence of an IR‐UWB system based on an orthogonal sinusoidal correlation receiver (OSCR) with an IEEE 802.11a WLAN through a detailed simulation. The coexistence performance of the two systems is characterized in terms of the receiver's bit‐error rates. Then, some approaches to interference mitigation are discussed.