Simulation Model of a Relay Based Autonomous ECG Monitoring System Using Wireless Sensors

Recent technological advances in sensors, wireless networking, low power microelectronics, enabled the design and proliferation of wireless sensor networks in human health care monitoring systems. As health care data transmission is a very critical application, high reliability is required in order to avoid fault diagnosis. The concept relaying is incorporated in order to ensure reliable transmission from the source to destination thereby increasing the throughput. The transmission and reception of ECG signal alone is considered in this paper. Performance is analysed by using Amplify and Forward and Decode and Forward relaying protocols. To overcome the energy consumption problem, a new approach for selection of relays is proposed based on the critical distance as a condition. Further, this relay selection is applicable for realistic non linear battery model which has not been considered in relay networks so far. In non linear battery model, the relay can be located arbitrarily. Thus, is approach enables to transmit the data in energy efficient manner and ensures high reliability.