Rochester Institute of Technology Researchers Work on Sensor Network
From: RFID Journal - 10/20/2007
By: Claire Swedberg

The Rochester Institute of Technology has embarked on a multiyear project to
create a secure RFID-enabled sensor network that would allow medical care
providers to remotely monitor the cardiac health and medicine consumption of
their patients while reducing costs, according to project team leader and RIT
computer engineering professor Fei Hu. He says current data-securing
technology is too power-consumptive for the heart-monitoring system he has
conceived, and that the RIT researchers' challenge is to build a platform
where network protocols can automatically encrypt data without making the
system so complex that its power requirements are excessive. "We aim to
create a low-overhead, low-complexity, low-power security scheme for RFID
reader-tag communications," says Hu. The system would enable patients to wear
an RFID tag linked to a sensor affixed to several bodily areas to monitor
vital signs. The battery-driven tags would send data to receivers implemented
throughout the hospital or nursing home. The receivers would then send the
data directly to a server, or to another gateway before being routed to the
server. The project will involve collaboration with University of Alabama
professor Yang Xiao; his team will design the algorithms for securing the
data, while Hu says RIT's contribution will consist of developing the RFID
tags and interrogators, and integrating the readers with back-end databases.
The RIT research group is employing small, inexpensive sensors to interface
with battery-powered tags. The RFID tags would only send a unique ID that
could then be linked to a patient's information in a database, but Hu points
to the need for an additional layer of security so that the ID number is safe
from unauthorized parties. 

Read the entire article at:
http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/3646/1/1/

Links:
Applying RFID to Remote Heart Monitoring
http://www.communicationsdirectnews.com/do.php/150/27133?199

RIT scientists hope to revolutionize notion of telemedicine
http://www.rit.edu/news/?v=45862

Fei Hu
http://www.ce.rit.edu/~fxheec/

Yang Xiao
http://cs.ua.edu/~yangxiao/