Wireless Sensor N etworks with QoS for e-Health and e-Emergency
Applications
Oscar Gama1, Paulo Carvalho1, J. A. Afonso2
and P. M. Mendes2
Universidade do Minho, Campus de Gualtar1
Departamento de Informática
P-4710-057 Braga, Portugal
E-mail: {osg,pmc} at di.uminho.pt
Universidade do Minho, Campus de Azurém2
Departamento de Electrónica Industrial
P-4800-058 Guimarães, Portugal
E-mail: {jose.afonso,paulo.mendes} at dei.uminho.pt
Abstract
Most body sensor networks (BSN) only offer best-effort service
delivery, which may compromise the successful operation of emergency
healthcare (e-emergency) applications. Due to its real-time nature,
e-emergency systems must provide quality of service (QoS) support, in
order to provide a pervasive, valuable and fully reliable assistance to
patients with risk abnormalities. But what is the real meaning of QoS
support within the e-emergency context? What benefits can QoS
mechanisms bring to e-emergency systems, and how are they being
deployed? In order to answer these questions, this paper firstly
discusses the need of QoS in personal wireless healthcare systems, and
then presents an overview of such systems with QoS. A case-study
requiring QoS support, intended to be deployed in a healthcare unit, is
presented, as well as an asynchronous medium access TDMA-based
model.
EHST
2008, Porto, Portugal, 2008