Unobstructive Body Area Networks (BAN) for Efficient Movement Monitoring

Sensors

Filipe Felisberto¹  Nuno Costa²  Florentino Fdez-Riverola¹ 

[1] Higher Technical School of Computer Engineering, University of Vigo, Polytechnic Building, Campus Universitario As Lagoas s/n, 32004 Ourense, Spain; E-Mail:;INOV INESC INNOVATION, Institute of New Technologies of Leiria, P-2411-901, Leiria, Portugal; E-Mails:

关键词: Wireless Body Area Networks;    motion recognition;    rehabilitation;    profiling;    inertial and physiological sensors;   

DOI  :  10.3390/s120912473

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

The technological advances in medical sensors, low-power microelectronics and miniaturization, wireless communications and networks have enabled the appearance of a new generation of wireless sensor networks: the so-called wireless body area networks (WBAN). These networks can be used for continuous monitoring of vital parameters, movement, and the surrounding environment. The data gathered by these networks contributes to improve users' quality of life and allows the creation of a knowledge database by using learning techniques, useful to infer abnormal behaviour. In this paper we present a wireless body area network architecture to recognize human movement, identify human postures and detect harmful activities in order to prevent risk situations. The WBAN was created using tiny, cheap and low-power nodes with inertial and physiological sensors, strategically placed on the human body. Doing so, in an as ubiquitous as possible way, ensures that its impact on the users' daily actions is minimum. The information collected by these sensors is transmitted to a central server capable of analysing and processing their data. The proposed system creates movement profiles based on the data sent by the WBAN's nodes, and is able to detect in real time any abnormal movement and allows for a monitored rehabilitation of the user.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2012 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.