Performance of an Accelerometer-Based Wireless Body Area Network in Indoor Environment: A Preliminary Study

摘要

The promising purpose of wireless body area networks have brought a new paradigm in many aspects such as healthcare, lifestyle, and entertainment. One of the most popular sensors is the accelerometer which meant to monitor movements of its user. With the help of MEMS technology, an integrated chip which has both sensor and wireless module makes an easy way to monitor things. This paper provided a preliminary study on the performance of an accelerometer tag which works under the IEEE 802.15.4 standards with 2.45 GHz of frequency. The study included observing the behavior of the tag in indoor environment as it was strapped on the user's wrist while standing still or moving. The experiment showed that the accelerometer tag's RSS did not significantly affected by the user's movement by only 1.61% of difference. However, its packet loss was quite affected by the movements as it gets 43% worse than when it was not moving. Overall, the distance between the transmitter and the receiver was getting farther, the packet rate was also decreasing as a result of its dropping received signal strength.