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Intelligent Systems Group
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
P.O.Box 4500
FIN-90014 University of Oulu
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Tel. +358-8-553 1011
Fax. +358-8-553 2612
ISG WILHO, Wireless Hospital
11/2006 - 02/2008Introduction
This project focused on short-range wireless communication in hospital environment; primarily on Near Field Communication (NFC) compliant RFID technology and the emerging low-rate wireless personal area network technology as specified in the IEEE 802.15.4 standard with implementation of 6LoWPAN.
The system developed in the project is shown in Figure 1 as part of a wider wireless hospital concept. The implemented system is circled with a dashed line.
Figure 1. The mobile terminal and the RFID reader as part of the wireless hospital.
The mobile terminal
The mobile terminal communicates over a short-range wireless network with the devices in the local environment. We equipped a Nokia 770 terminal with Sensinode MicroModules (bottom right in Figure 2) to connect with the RFID reader. The RFID reader reads the relevant RFID tag and sends the required information over the IEEE 802.15.4 to the N770. By programming Nanostack v1.0.0 on RFID reader and N770 side makes the communication compatible and transparent to the user.
Figure 2. The short-range wireless technology.
The Sensinode Micro and NanoModules contain the NanoStack protocol stack; it is a 6LoWPAN IPv6 + IEEE 802.15.4 protocol stack. NanoStack has built-in radio chip drivers for TI CC2420 and CC2430 radios. These radios implement part of the IEEE 802.15.4 standard in hardware. The rest of the IEEE 802.15.4 standard is implemented inside NanoStack.
The Sensinode module installed in N770 contains the Micro.USB U600 and Micro.2420 U100 modules. The Sensinode module was connected to the USB socket of the N770 and installed on the back of the N770. We made the N770 USB to work in host mode. By default, the N770 USB is in the client mode, that is, it can be connected to an USB host. The host mode enables USB client devices (the Sensinode module in this case) to be connected to the N770.
Nokia 770 can work in host mode, and instructions for setting the host mode can be found from the Internet. However, N770 cannot supply enough power to the client device (i.e. to the Sensinode module) through the USB connector. Hence, a separate power source and a simple circuit board are needed to supply power to the N770’s USB socket. Finally, casing is needed. Figure 3 shows the casing and what Figure 4 what is installed inside it.
Figure 3. The casing for N770.
Figure 4. The battery, Sensinode module, and circuit board for supplying power.
The wireless RFID reader
This small RFID reader communicates with the mobile terminal in a wireless fashion. The wireless RFID reader reads data from RFID tags and delivers it over the short-range wireless 802.15.4 6LoWPAN connection to the N770 terminal. NFC (Near Field Communication) compliant RFID technology was selected for the reader, as this allows reading the same tags with mobile phones that are equipped with RFID readers. The reading distance is quite short, the user has to nearly touch the tag with the reader. This was an intentional decision, as a short reading distance enables the reading events to be interpreted as commands given by the user. More information about NFC can be found from the NFC Forum web pages.
Mifare (ISO 1443A standard) type tags operating at 13.56 MHz were selected. Common tag models can store 512 and 1024 bits of information. Figure 5 presents the reader, the circuit board is shown on the left and the casing on the right.
Figure 5. The RFID reader.
The first central component of the reader is the NXP’s NFC transmission module IC, PN512. This circuit implements the NFC communication with the RFID tag. The antenna shown in Figure 4 is for the NFC communication. The second central component is the NanoModule (the reader shown in the figure has an older version). This module implements the IEEE 802.15.4, 2.4 GHz communication over 6LoWPAN protocol with the N770 terminal.
The application platform and the applications
The main focus of application devlopment was to implement for hospital environment an application for ordering items (e.g. clothes). However, the implemented software is not only for this application area, but it provides an application platform called Ideasilo, facilitating the development of applications which use RFID and IEEE 802.15.4 technologies to communicate with other devices and RFID tags in the environment. The program uses the N770’s USB interface which provides a connection to the wireless radio transceiver. The wireless radio transceiver is used to communicate with the RFID reader. When a tag is read, the RFID reader sends the relevant tag data to the program which augments the data with additional data obtained from a remote Internet server. The user is then able to utilize the data with applications built into Ideasilo.
Ideasilo abstracts the communication with the RFID reader; an application receives a general event when an RFID tag is read. Furthermore, if a content server has been specified, Ideasilo fetches automatically from the server data that is related to the read tag. An application receives this data in a general format that is easy to utilize. Ideasilo offers also a general user interface that can be configured for specific applications. In practice, Ideasilo contains general C++ classes that can be specialized based on the application’s requirements.
Two applications have been implemented on top of Ideasilo so far: an ordering application and a data management application. When a nurse needs to order clothes for a ward, she/he starts the ordering application. The ordering is made by touching the tags associated with different clothes. One possibility to place the RFID tags is to use a poster that contains all tags. An example of such poster is presented in Figure 6, left; on the right side of poster a user is reading a tag. Another option would be to place the tags in the locations of the ordered items, for example, on shelves.
Figure 6. Tags and instructions in a poster.
When the ordering application is started, an empty ordering form is displayed. As a tag is read, the corresponding item is added in the order form. Figure 7 shows an order form after reading some tags. The user can modify the data, e.g. the amount. When all the items have been entered into the order form, the order can be send forward directly from the terminal.
Figure 7. The ordering application.
The data management application lets the user to browse the information related to tags and to modify the information. When a tag is touched, the information related to it is fetched from a server on the Internet and shown on the terminal’s display (Figure 8). The shown information can also be edited and the changes can be updated to the server.
Figure 8. The data management application.
Deliverables
The published deliverables have been collected into two packages, they both can been downloaded from SourceForge, see the Wilho directory. These packages are included in the NanoStack 6lowpan project.
The first package, Wireless_RFID_Reader.zip contains material about the wireless RFID designed in the project. This package has been published under the under the GNU General Public License. The package contains the following material:
- Hardware: document files of the component list and layout for the RFID reader's printed circuit board, JPG pictures of the schematics, and the PCB schematic files designed with Cadsoft's Eagle Layout Editor.
- Software: Software for the RFID reader's NanoModule and a document file describing the software with compiling and installation instructions.
- Instructions : Brief user instructions of how to use the RFID reader.
The second package, Ideasilo.zip, contains the Ideasilo application platform for Nokia N770 and the applications. This package has been published under the MIT License (a copy of the license is included in the package). The package contains the following material
- Software: Ideasilo binaries for ARMEL architecture, Ideasilo sources, libglade2-0 for ARMEL architecture
- Instuctions: Installation instructions, user manual
Publications
S. Seppänen, M.I. Ashraf, J. Riekki: RFID-Based Solution for Collecting Information and Activating Services in Hospital Environment. The 2nd International Symposium on Medical Information and Communication Technology (ISMICT'07), Oulu, Finland, Dec. 11-13, 2007.
M.I. Ashraf, M. Härkönen, M. Hämäläinen, J. Riekki: Health Care Process Management Supported by Wireless Technology. Finnish Signal Processing Symposium 2007, Oulu, Finland, Aug. 30, 2007.
M. Hämäläinen, P. Pirinen, Z. Shelby: Advanced Wireless ICT Healthcare Research. The 16th IST Mobile and Wireless Communication Summit, Budapest, Hungary, July 1-5, 2007. (Invited Paper)
M.I. Ashraf, S. Seppänen, R. Slitz, M. Hämäläinen, C. Polalaza-Ráez: Implementation Issues for Wireless Medical Devices. The 2nd International Symposium on Medical Information and Communication Technology (ISMICT'07), Oulu, Finland, Dec. 11-13, 2007.
Project Partners
- TEKES
- Nokia
- Oulu Deaconess Institute
- Sensinode
- Medanets
- Oulu University Hospital
- CWC, Centre for Wireless Communications
ContactsJukka Riekki