Abstract:
Pandemic situation such as COVID-19 boosted
the demand for remote patient monitoring (RPM) system. The
medical sensors attached to the human body in RPM system
experience varying channel quality due to body movements.
This paper analyzes the signal received from RPM sensors
when a patient rotates by different angles while sitting on
a chair as well as heed the use of a relay node placed on
his/her body. Literature suggests many relay-based communication protocols to deliver physio-signals efficiently in an
RPM application. However, limited studies have focused on
the position of a relay node on the human body. In this
paper, we empirically analyze the off-body communication
path of sensor nodes by collecting data from different body
orientations in a residential room. We estimate the path loss parameters for underweight, normal and overweight body
mass index (BMI) categories. The estimated parameters are then used to simulate the physical layer of a home-based
indoor RPM application. We inspect different relay node positions on the human body and allude an optimal position of
the relay node that cover the transmission range of all sensors and provides an improved channel quality. We improve
the Quality of Service (QoS) during non-line-of-sight (NLOS) situation and design an adaptive cross-layer communication
protocol for WBANs.
