Implementation of a wireless body area network based on IEEE 802.15.6 for remote patient monitoring system

Developments in wireless and battery technologies has been putting wireless equipment every part of our lives. But widespread use of wireless medical equipment has yet to come. Existing wireless communication technologies can not provide the reliability expected from a medical equipment. Technologies such as Bluetooth and ZigBee has not been designed with extreme reliability and security in focus and they are not ideal from a power efficiency perspective. Although Wi-Fi, 4G can provide reliable and high bandwidth connections the fact that they require relatively big circuitry and their high power usage, eliminates them from use of on body patient sensors. In this thesis, development of a wireless communication system that should provide wire equivalent reliability, capable of uninterrupted streaming for use in remote patient monitoring applications is aimed. This work encompasses the development of a wireless communication module that will be placed on the patient body and a gateway device hardware along with its wireless communication stack. Implementation of the Medium Access Control Layer is based on the 802.15.6 Wireless Body Area Networks specification that is released by IEEE organization in 2012. Along with MAC layer, a modular service layer that manages different sensors and features of monitoring devices according to Machine to Machine (M2M) principles has been developed.