Recent Advances on Energy Efficient Cluster Based Routing Protocols of Wireless Sensor Networks for Healthcare Systems

A number of hospitals and medical centres are exploring applications of wireless sensor network (WSN) technology to a wide range of medical applications, including pre-hospital, in-hospital emergency care, disaster response, and stroke patient rehabilitation. Current Healthcare Wireless Sensor Networks research trends focus on patient, reliable communication, patient mobility, and energy-efficient routing, among others. The studies focus on different cluster-based routing protocols which are used in increasing energy efficiency of WSN for healthcare application and to point out important issues in cluster-based routing (CBR) protocol that guide to improve them in order to extend their application range. This paper surveys the WSNs energy-efficient CBR techniques that are used for Healthcare Communication system. The routing protocols are categorized according to their respective energy efficiency. The authors intend for researchers to quickly identify areas that require more attention and to propose a novel methodology for improving the effectiveness of existing protocols.