Grant: Strategic Projects - Group

Recent advances in very-low-power wireless communications, including the development of ZigBee (IEEE 802.15.4) and ultra low power Bluetooth (introduced previously by Nokia as Wibree) have stimulated great interest in the development and application of wireless technology in biomedical applications, including wireless body area sensor networks (WBASNs). A WBASN consists of multiple sensor nodes capable of sampling, processing, and communicating one or more vital signs (e.g., heart rate, brain activity, blood pressure, oxygen saturation) and/or environmental parameters (location, temperature, humidity, light) over extended periods. Typically, these sensors are placed strategically on the human body or hidden in users' clothing to enable ubiquitous monitoring of the users and their environments. Low-cost wearable WBASNs that do not require precise close coupling with the human bodies are especially advantageous for widespread applications in fields as diverse as emergency medicine, long-term health care, athletic training, workplace safety, consumer electronics, secure authentication, and safe-guarding of uniformed personnel. The overall goal of this project is to contribute to the development of the channel models, protocol designs, security methods, cross-layer designs and sensor data processing techniques that will make WBASNs more secure, reliable, and effective and thereby make their widespread deployment practical and commercially viable. These enabling technologies will be developed through interdisciplinary collaborations between academia, industry, non-profit health-care organizations, and government research laboratories. Researchers from the University of British Columbia, Carleton University, Neil Squire Society and Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC) will work closely with industry partners including Nokia, Agilent Technologies, Ascalade Communications Inc., and Western Clinical Engineering to advance enabling technologies for WBASNs while training a large number of highly qualified personnel at the postgraduate and undergraduate levels to serve the needs of the growing wireless communications, biomedical engineering and tele-health industry in Canada.