Volume 2 Number 5 (Sep. 2013)
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IJCCE 2013 Vol.2(5): 596-600 ISSN: 2010-3743
DOI: 10.7763/IJCCE.2013.V2.256

Approaches for Energy Harvesting and Power Management in Wireless Healthcare Sensor Networks

Anagha Jamthe and Dharma P. Agrawal
Abstract—Recent interest in providing better quality medical services is booming. This has given rise to development of many new wireless technologies and has made Healthcare Sensor Network (HSN) as one of the popular areas of research. HSN is composed of a Wireless Body area Sensor Network (WBASN) and an Infrastructure Area Sensor Networks (IASN). In this paper, we discuss various challenges involved in designing and evaluating the performance of a HSN. As the sensor nodes are supported by batteries, they run on limited power supply. Thus, enhancing the network lifetime by efficient power management and effective energy harvesting strategies has become an important research goal. HSN operate in a highly dynamic environment and hence consume more power. Past research concentrated on energy harvesting using ambient sources such as solar, wind, thermal and vibration energy. Very little research has been done on harvesting thermal heat from the body and surrounding wasted heat. As there are many professionals like firefighters or first responders, who experience very high degree of activity and drastically increased physical and physiological operations in a short period of time, we explore the use of Small Thermoelectric Generators (TEGs) in harvesting energy from the body heat for such personal. We also discuss the potential application of harnessing surrounding waste thermal energy during a firefighting operation.

Index Terms—Energy harvesting, healthcare sensor networks (HSN), power management, thermoelectric generator (TEG), wireless body area sensor networks (WBASN).

The authors are with School of Computing Sciences and Informatics, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH 45221-0008, USA (e-mail: jamtheas@mail.uc.edu, agrawadp@ucmail.uc.edu).

Cite:Anagha Jamthe and Dharma P. Agrawal, "Approaches for Energy Harvesting and Power Management in Wireless Healthcare Sensor Networks," International Journal of Computer and Communication Engineering vol. 2, no. 5, pp. 596-600, 2013.

General Information

ISSN: 2010-3743 (Online)
Abbreviated Title: Int. J. Comput. Commun. Eng.
Frequency: Quarterly
Editor-in-Chief: Dr. Maode Ma
Abstracting/ Indexing: INSPEC, CNKI, Google Scholar, Crossref, EBSCO, ProQuest, and Electronic Journals Library
E-mail: ijcce@iap.org
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