Characterizing The Energy Consumption and Maximum Coverage of 802.15.1 V4.2 for Wearable Home-care Monitoring Systems
Nasibeh Heshmati Molaei, Seyed Ali Seyedalian, Alireza Sinaee Oskouie, Eisa Zarepour · 2020
Energy consumption of the wearable home-care monitoring systems is a major challenge due to the need for continuous remote monitoring of the patients. Choosing the appropriate communication protocol to reduce energy consumption of these systems is, therefore, a key parameter. Since the recent versions of the IEEE 802.15.1 (Bluetooth) protocol can potentially reduce energy consumption and provide a better coverage range, they are promising for wearable homecare monitoring systems (WHMS). On the other hand, a deep energy consumption analysis of these protocols for WHMS has not been thoroughly yet conducted. In this paper, using software and hardware-based energy monitoring platform, the energy consumption and maximum coverage of the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) V4.2 is experimentally evaluated in different homecare scenarios in which the wireless signal may travel through the wood, metal, brick wall, body, and similar obstacles. Our results show that the highest energy consumption of the BLE 4.2 occurs when there is a human body or brick wall obstacle between the transmitter and receiver. Our extensive experiments also reveal that the maximum effective coverage range of a BLE 4.2 enabled WHMS is 36m in line of sight scenarios which decline to around 25m and 18.5m when the signal travels through brick walls and the human body, respectively, which all these numbers are suitable for WHMS.