Real-Time Analysis of Correlations Between On-Body Sensor Nodes

Abstract

The topology of a body sensor network has, until recently, often been overlooked; either because the layout of the network is deemed to be sufficiently static (”we always know well enough where sensors are”), we always know exactly where the nodes are or because the location of the sensor is not inherently required (”as long as the node stays where it is, we do not need its location, just its data”). We argue in this paper that, especially as the sensor nodes become more numerous and densely interconnected, an analysis on the correlations between the data streams can be valuable for a variety of purposes. Two systems illustrate how a mapping of the network’s sensor data to a topology of the sensor nodes’ correlations can be applied to reveal more about the physical structure of body sensor networks