A comparative study of wireless communication protocols for monitoring vital signs in athletes in a soccer field

This paper provides a comprehensive investigation of two wireless protocols performance over short range communications for monitoring vital signs in athletes, mainly during training. Live physiological monitoring of athletes during sports can help to optimize their performance at a specific time in order to maximize athlete efficiency and preventing undesirable events like injuries. ZigBee (over IEEE 802.15.4) is becoming a popular way to create wireless personal area network due to its low power consumption and scalability while Wi-Fi (over IEEE 802.11g) provides the solution for portability with connection of mobility as well. This article presents the evaluation results of system performance using OPNET simulation for the two different wireless standards. The evaluation is concentrated on providing results regarding network values such as end-to-end delay, traffic, average throughput captured from global and objects statistics. Key-Words: Wireless sensor networks, Performance evaluation, OPNET, Simulation, Throughput