Advanced patient health monitoring system using power line communication technology

Abstract

Open source automation system is rapidly developing towards more reliable communication systems. In recent years for its convenient installation and low cost the power line increasingly become a popular transmission medium in creating industrial/ resident work. PLC is a technology uses power lines as physical media for data transmission. PLC offers a no new wires solution because the infrastructure has already been established. PLC modems are used for transmitting data at a rapid speed through a power line in a house, an office, a building, and a factory, etc. Due to this additional telemetry features, cost of the devices are more and all hospital or clinic cannot afford to buy them. Hence in our work, temperature, blood pressure and heart beat monitoring equipment based on power line communication is developed. This is cost effective equipment which uses existing power cables as communication medium. Power Line Modem (PLM) is used for transmitting and receiving the signals over power line cable. Signalsare modulated and demodulated using direct-sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) technology. When compared with other communication technologies like local area network (LAN), ZigBee, Bluetooth, the establishment cost for healthcare monitor using Power Line Communication (PLC) was low.