Internet of things for healthcare monitoring applications based on RFID clustering scheme

COVID-19 surprised the whole world by its quick and sudden spread. Coronavirus pushes all community sectors: government, industry, academia, and nonprofit organizations to take forward steps to stop and control this pandemic. It is evident that IT-based solutions are urgent. This study is a small step in this direction, where health information is monitored and collected continuously. In this work, we build a network of smart nodes where each node comprises a Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) tag, reduced function RFID reader (RFRR), and sensors. The smart nodes are grouped in clusters, which are constructed periodically. The RFRR reader of the clusterhead collects data from its members, and once it is close to the primary reader, it conveys its data and so on. This approach reduces the primary RFID reader’s burden by receiving data from the clusterheads only instead of reading every tag when they pass by its vicinity. Besides, this mechanism reduces the channel access congestion; thus, it reduces the interference significantly. Furthermore, to protect the exchanged data from potential attacks, two levels of security algorithms, including an AES 128 bit with hashing, have been implemented. The proposed scheme has been validated via mathematical modeling using Integer programming, simulation, and prototype experimentation. The proposed technique shows low data delivery losses and a significant drop in transmission delay compared to contemporary approaches.