Intelligent Communication Module for Wireless Biosensor Networks

Abstract

Technological advancement, miniaturisation of electronic devices and progress in ad-hoc network routing protocols and embedded systems have facilitated developments in the field of biosensors and biosensor networks. Biosensor networks are a collection of biosensor units that collect information about biological responses and process it in order to make a decision for a desired outcome. In today’s market there is a demand for ultra low power consumption, portability and wireless connectivity from the biosensors for information exchange. This chapter introduces a new paradigm of biosensors which have processing capability with an intelligent and adaptive wireless communication module. The adaptive communication module efficiently reconfigures its hardware components according to the changes in operating environment in order to reduce system power consumption and optimally utilise resources. Due to the intelligent wireless communication module, the biosensor unit becomes a state of the art independent system as well as part of a wireless biosensor network (WBSN). The WBSNs find applications in areas such as medical parameter monitoring, environmental monitoring, chemical/biological detection, food and water analysis, soil monitoring, security and safety. These applications of the WBSNs potentially cover the current market trends and will significantly contribute to benefits of technological advancement for the community. The chapter is structured as follows. Section 2 presents intelligent biosensor node, its functionality and design requirements. It also discusses the remote patient monitoring application and lists potential applications of WBSNs. Section 3 proposes to use Ultra Wideband (UWB) impulse radio as a communication module for biosensor nodes. It also discusses the potential problems and possible solutions for the use of UWB impulse radio architecture for biosensor node. Digital UWB impulse radio architecture suitable for biosensors is described in section 4. Section 5 discusses the parallelism requirement analysis, proposes real time reconfigurability algorithm (RTRA) and discusses its design requirements. Section 6 presents the design and implementation of the RTRA. Conclusions are drawn in section 7 followed by references in section 8.