Traffic models for medical wireless sensor networks

Stochastic data traffic models for medical wireless sensor networks (WSN's) are presented that represent the traffic generated by a single WSN node monitoring body temperature and electrocardiogram (ECG) data. The models are based on empirical data from public domain medical signal databases. In the interest of conserving energy, it is likely that some medical WSN nodes will employ source coding to reduce the amount of data that must be transmitted. As a result, traffic models are presented for nodes that use compression and nodes that do not.