| 摘要 |
A method of operating a wireless sensor network having a plurality of network devices including sensors (11E, 13) for monitoring a plurality of parameters, and a coordinator (10) for communicating with the network devices either directly in a star protocol or indirectly in a peer-to-peer protocol, the method comprising:
arranging the coordinator (10) for communication over a low-priority link with at least a subset of said network devices;
gathering sensor data by sensors of the network devices and transferring the data to the coordinator;
detecting existence of an emergency state with respect to at least one of the network devices (11E);
establishing a high-priority link with said at least one of the devices (11E) in the emergency state, said high-priority link having higher priority for network resources than said low-priority link; and
where said one device is acting as a relay for low-priority links with other devices (13), maintaining, modifying or dropping those low-priority links in dependence upon whether or not the other devices are in emergency, a level of congestion or QoS of the high-priority link, and/or the electrical power available to said one (11E) of the devices. The method may be applied, for example, to monitoring of patients in a hospital using MBANs operating in accordance with IEEE 802.15.6. |
