Vital signs data aggregation and transmission over controller area network (CAN)

Abstract

An Intensive Care Unit (ICU) consists of patient bedsides which are equipped with a set of sensors to monitor the condition of the patient. These sensors nodes periodically send the patients' vital signs data to the central monitoring system for storing, analysis and emergency treatment requirements. The medical staff uses this data to ascertain the condition of the patient and to provide necessary medications, in case of abnormality. In this paper a design of Controller Area Network (CAN) based ICU monitoring system is presented. CAN provides high speed and reliable transmission of distributed sensor networks data. The key feature in this design is the proposed aggregation scheme which is adopted to effectively utilize the bandwidth and decrease bus load in order to accommodate more number of patients within the existing network. © 2012 Springer-Verlag GmbH.