Middleware for Wireless Medical Body Area Network

Abstract

Advances in wireless sensor technology have opened up a new paradigm in the healthcare industry. Ubiquitous and embedded medical monitoring is no longer a myth and this helps improve the daily lives of the sick, elderly, infirm, and chronically ill people. Given the variety of medical body sensors and its applications, it is definitely of interest to implement a middleware system that shield off these differences from the application layer. The aim of this paper is to propose such middleware for wireless medical body area network. The proposed middleware has the ability to support: (i) multiple sensors and applications, (ii) plug and play feature, and (iii) resource management. The middleware has been implemented and the prototype system has been built. The effective uses of the proposed middleware will be shown with the healthcare monitoring system running on top of the middleware.