Enhanced Reliable Mesh Communication Platforms for Smart Patient Wristbands

Smart patient wristbands are expected to store patient information, monitor real-time vital signs, notify nurses for timely and emergency services, alert patients about safety issues, and assist with daily hospital operations. To better track patient movements, especially those with infectious diseases, these smart IoT wristbands are equipped with low-cost, MRI-safe Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) transceivers. In this paper, we propose a system design with improved communication reliability, utilizing Bluetooth mesh networks at the frontend and a fog-based cloud backend. The design is to handle dynamic data traffic load variations, such as those occurring in suddenly crowded hospital environments during epidemics, where excess patients may be placed in random locations, including corridors. With the widespread adoption of BLE in smartphones, patient endpoints can be easily set up in our system during emergencies. Testbed experiments and measurements confirm that frames from different BLE nodes in our model can reach edge devices (e.g., nurse stations) through three different operating modes. The CoAP-assisted Fog (CaF) mode offers delivery guarantees with high success rates than that of the regular BLE mesh mode.