A Software-Defined Wireless Network-Based System for Prioritizing Medical Alert Messages

• Genilson Israel Da Silva UFJF
• Alex Borges Vieira UFJF
• Michele Nogueira UFMG
• Edelberto Franco Silva UFJF
• José Augusto Miranda Nacif UFV

Resumo

Health Monitoring Systems (HMS) are among the most notable applications for Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs). Online medical systems can use data collected in real-time by WBANs miniaturized sensors to early detect critical health events. In this sense, the alerts HMSs send to a central server must be prioritized by the network, ensuring lower delays and loss rates for medical alert packets. This paper proposes a platform based on Software Defined Wireless Networks (SDWN) for on-demand medium access prioritization of medical alert packets based on the IEEE 802.11 Medium Access Control programmatic management. The platform has been evaluated in a real wireless network environment, where multiple wireless stations contended for medium access. In a high dense scenario, we have observed a 34.65% reduction in the average delay of the prioritized medical alert packets compared to non-prioritized ones and a 58.62% decrease in the packet loss rate.

Palavras-chave: Wireless body area networks, software defined wireless networks, medium access prioritization