Reliable and privacy-preserving wireless body-area sensor networks for e-health monitoring

随着婴儿潮一代继续步入老年，医疗费用一直在飙升。与标准的传统保健相比，远程电子保健监测已被证明有望减少急诊室就诊和/或住院。随着无线通信和网络技术的发展，人体无线传感器网络正在成为监测患者健康和疾病进展的新途径。本研究项目的重点是开发用于电子医疗应用的无线身体区域传感器网络。考虑到独特的传播特性和严格的网络性能要求，它将开发一套新的网络解决方案，用于节能、可靠和保护隐私的无线信息传输。它将(i)分析和开发具有潜在中继节点和协作通信的网络拓扑结构，以保证信息传输的可靠性；（ii）开发介质访问控制方案，以实现身体区域传播环境中传感器节点的高能效；（iii）开发信息安全和隐私保护协议，这些协议对于在患者和医疗保健提供者之间传输敏感的患者医疗保健信息和身份至关重要。

Healthcare costs have been skyrocketing as the baby boom generation continues to grey. Remote e-health monitoring has been shown to be promising for decreasing emergency room visits and/or hospitalizations, as compared to standard traditional healthcare. With the advancement of wireless communications and networking technology, wireless sensor networks on human body are emerging as a new approach to monitoring patient health and disease progression. This research project focuses on development of wireless body area sensor networks for e-healthcare applications. It will develop a new set of networking solutions for power-efficient, reliable, and privacy-preserving wireless information delivery, taking account of the unique propagation characteristics and strict networking performance requirements. It will (i) analyze and develop network topology with potential relay node and cooperative communications to guarantee reliability in information transfer, (ii) develop a medium access control scheme to achieve high energy efficiency for sensor nodes in a body-area propagation environment, and (iii) develop information security and privacy preservation protocols that are critical for transmitting sensitive patient healthcare information and identity between the patient and healthcare providers.