Analysis of 6LOWPAN and CoAP protocols for maternal health care

Abstract

The concept of the Internet of Things (IoT) enables our common devices and gadgets to get interconnected in order to exchange information and acts according to the environmental stimuli. These are called smart IoT devices or motes that consist of sensors and actuators. When these IoT motes are connected to the Internet, the user can control them remotely from any part of the world. By using the benefits of IoT devices, remote patient monitoring can be implemented to monitor the pregnant women in rural areas. Especially the blood pressure of the maternal women can be remotely monitored and diagnosed with the preeclampsia. The usage of IoT devices such as smart BP monitoring devices can send the sensed information over the air so that the doctors can receive, store and process them for the prediction of abnormalities in real time. Moreover, in the case of smart IoT devices which are battery operated, the energy is a crucial factor to be considered. Most of the medical gadgets depend on battery sources; the power conservation by the nodes is at prime focus. Since it also involves crucial time bounded data to be transmitted, the delay incurred for data transmission, in terms of round trip time (RTT) is at next to be measured. In this work, two IoT based routing protocols (CoAP and 6LOWPAN) have been simulated for evaluating power and delay for a defined network environment under study. The inference of the performance of the network is evaluated on par with the IoT-based remote patient monitoring system.