WIRELESS BODY SENSOR NETWORK

• US 20090023391A1
• Filed: 02/14/2007
• Published: 01/22/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 02/24/2006
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. (Koninklijke Philips N.V.)
• Original Assignee: Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. (Koninklijke Philips N.V.)
• Inventors: Falck, Thomas
• Application Number:
  US12/279,994
• Publication Number:
  US 20090023391A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 455/41.200
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 2560/0209 adapted for power saving
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/002 Monitoring the patient using a local or closed circuit, e.g. in a room or building A61B5/0017 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/0024 for multiple sensor units attached to the patient, e.g. using a body or personal area network
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/0028 Body tissue as transmission medium, i.e. transmission systems where the medium is the human body
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/63 for local operation
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 13/005 Transmission systems in which the medium consists of the human body
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/12 specially adapted for proprietary or special-purpose networking environments, e.g. medical networks, sensor networks, networks in vehicles or remote metering networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 52/0219 where the power saving management affects multiple terminals
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 8/005 Discovery of network devices, e.g. terminals
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 84/18 Self-organising networks, e.g. ad-hoc networks or sensor networks
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 30/70 in wireless communication networks

Abstract

Disclosed are communication devices especially devices adapted for use as body-worn medical sensors for continuously measuring ECG, SpO2, heart rate, blood pressure and the like, and in particular a method and apparatus for setting up wireless networks of such devices, specifically a communication device adapted for attachment to the body of a wearer so as to form part of a body area network (“BAN”) comprising a body coupled communication (“BCC”) device, and a short-range radio device, the device including means for detecting other similar communication devices on the wearer using BCC, and means for establishing a wireless network with other such devices using their short range radios.

Claims

1. A communication device adapted for attachment to the body of a wearer so as to form part of a body area network (“

BAN”

) comprising a body coupled communication (“

BCC”

) device, and a short-range radio device, the device including means for detecting other similar communication devices on the wearer using BCC, and means for establishing a wireless network with other such devices using their short range radios, wherein the BCC device includes;

(a) means for discovering other similar devices attached to the same person;

(b) means for exchanging network parameters with similar devices; and

(c) means for sending a wake-up signal to a short-range radio device, which is in a low power sleep mode.

2. A communication device according to claim 1 in which the short-range radio device comprises a Bluetooth, Wifi or Zigbee device.

4. A medical sensor device incorporating a communication device according to claim 1.

5. A network of communication devices including a plurality of communication devices according to claim 1.

6. A method of setting up a wireless body-area-network according to claim 5, comprising the steps of:

(a) using one BCC device to search for other devices;

(b) exchanging network parameters between BCC devices when they have contacted one another;

(c) utilizing the network parameters to set up a network between the radio devices.

7. A body area network (“

BAN”

) of communication devices according to claim 5, and further comprising an external monitoring device which includes a BCC device and wireless communication means so that it can be connected to the BAN by contacting it to the body carrying the network.

3. (canceled)