Wearable for digital health requires communication strategy: IOT and LORAWAN
An ideal wearable digital health system has these 3 top requirements:
1. Simple – No complicated setup and automated data collection procedure
2. Long measurement – Ability to collect data over extended periods
3. Actionable data that is securely stored or sent to a database
Digital health technologies have one major power hungry requirement – the need to communicate. Considering that data is the major reason to do the study, communication of data is essential.
The need to communicate also makes the process of acquiring and managing data complicated because it involves adding a communication device that is usually the phone. This phone then needs to have an app. The phone then serves as the communication and authentication device but it adds significant complexity on keeping devices charged and communication protocols that need to work to communicate with the digital health device.
Some vendors have chosen to develop their own memory or device readers that connect to the internet and transfer the data at regular intervals. This usually works well because for digital wearable devices, frequent charging is required, and a composite charging and data transfer device is a good compromise.
However, as wearable devices get more power efficient, the major complexity and power hungry feature continues to be the communication protocols and methods. One method that cell phone providers have tried to advertise the use of SIM cards but that becomes cost prohibitive and many device companies have chosen to go the internet direct route.
Enter LoRa Alliance a long range low power architecture to enable the digital health needs
LoRa is a spread spectrum modulation technique that enables transmission of data over Long Range and using extremely low power. This technique is becoming almost the standard for the Internet of Things (IoT) framework that enables smart cities, smart homes and buildings.
LoRaWAN is a network protocol that is uses LoRa to communicate between devices through a mesh network that relies on passing on data between devices.
Some key facts:
Range: 1 to 3 miles in Urban and 8 miles in suburban
Frequency: 915MHz in USA
Standard: IEEE 802.15.4g
Implementing LoRa on a digital health device will enable the device to transfer data at low power to the nearest gateway situated within the city and transfer data. This will benefit three ways:
1. Removing the presence of the phone and associated complication
2. Ability to transmit data from anywhere in the city over long distances
3. Monitoring over long periods of time due to low power consumption
These advantages are significant and as more LoRa gateway becomes available, we will see more devices using the LoRa radio’s to work towards creating the ideal digital health device.