A Heart Rate Finger Ring and Its Smartphone APP Through Customized NFC

Population aging has become one of the most critical problems in contemporary society. Families and organizations are striving to provide better healthcare to the elderly and handicapped for their better living conditions. Due to these situations, the demand for remote health monitoring continues to grow rapidly. With the development of new technologies, such as smaller sensors and microcontrollers, the increasing widespread use of smartphones, and new wireless communication methods, a wireless body area network system can be constructed to provide more sophisticated solutions to satisfy this demand. The objective of this thesis is to demonstrate that such a system is feasible. A ring-shaped hardware device is implemented to measure the user’s heart rate and transfers the data to an Android phone through a customized Near Field Communication (NFC) tag. The tag is composed of a transponder to write data and a customized antenna to transfer data based on the resonance effect. An application is also developed to operate the NFC module to communicate with the tag. Data is then received, stored, and utilized on the phone. The ring and Android phone serve as Body Sensor Unit (BSU) and Body Central Unit (BCU) respectively in the Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) system. Then NFC technology links them together wirelessly. In order to implement the NFC Ring, a sensor is placed within the ring to convert the heart rate into an electric signal. This signal is filtered and amplified and sent to a microcontroller. Next, the microcontroller generates a count for computing the time interval between two pulses. Then the count value is written to the NFC tag through an NFC transponder. The antenna is specially designed to meet two core constraints: the size should be as small as possible to fit the ring, while still maintaining the ability to produce a large enough magnetic field. When an Android phone approaches the ring, the application on the phone will execute and read data in the tag by controlling the NFC reader. After being received, the data is stored in a SQLite database on the phone for further processing, such as rendering a history chart to show the trend. A prototype of this system has been developed to demonstrate the idea. This prototype can accurately read the heart rate per minute. Compared with a Radio-Frequency Identification ring, the NFC Ring has reduced system complexity and improved mobility. There are many possible improvements on both hardware and software. For instance, more research on NFC antenna design to enhance the stability of data transmission should be considered. The algorithm of heart rate measurement may be refined to generate more accurate data. More explanation of heart rate data and its trend await further exploration as well

Cyclist performance assessment based on WSN and cloud technologies

Mobility in big cities is a growing problem and the use of bicycles has been a solution which, together with new sharing services, helps to motivate users. There are also more and more users practicing sports involving the use of bicycles. It was in this context that the present dissertation was developed, a distributed sensor system for monitoring cyclists. With the support of a wireless sensor network connected to the internet and, using a set of smart sensors as end-nodes, it is possible to obtain data that will help the cyclist to improve his performance. The coach can monitor and evaluate the performance to improve their training sessions. The health status condition during training it is also monitored using cardiac and respiratory assessment sensors. The information from the nodes of the wireless sensor network is uploaded, via the internet connection, to the Firebase platform. An Android mobile application has been developed, this allows trainers to register cyclists, plan routes and observe the results collected by the network. With the inclusion of these technologies, the coach and the athlete may analyze the performance of a session and compare it with the previous training results. New training sessions may be established according to the athlete's needs. The effectiveness of the proposed system was experimentally tested and several results are included in this dissertation.A mobilidade nas grandes cidades é um problema crescente e a utilização das bicicletas tem vindo a ser uma solução que, em conjunto com novos serviços de partilha, ajudam a motivar os utilizadores. Há também cada vez mais utilizadores a praticar desportos que envolvem a utilização da bicicleta. Foi neste contexto que a presente dissertação foi desenvolvida, um sistema de sensores distribuídos para monitorização de ciclistas. Com o suporte de uma rede de sensores sem fios ligada á internet e, utilizando um conjunto de sensores inteligentes como nós, é possível obter dados que vão ajudar o ciclista a melhorar o seu desempenho. O treinador consegue monitorizar e avaliar o desempenho para aperfeiçoar as sessões de treino. A condição do estado de saúde é também monitorizada utilizando sensores de avaliação cardíaca e de respiratória. A informação proveniente dos nós da rede de sensores sem fios é carregada, através da ligação á internet, para a plataforma Firebase. Foi desenvolvida uma aplicação móvel Android, que permite que os treinadores registem ciclistas, planeiem rotas e observem os resultados recolhidos pela rede. Com a inclusão destas tecnologias, o treinador e o ciclista podem analisar o desempenho de uma sessão e compara-lo com os resultados do treino anterior. Podem ser estabelecidas novas sessões de treino de acordo com as necessidades do atleta. A eficácia do sistema proposto foi testada experimentalmente e os vários resultados foram incluídos nesta dissertação

Miniaturized antenna and transponder based wireless sensors for internet of things in healthcare

Future medical and healthcare systems will be largely improved by the wide-spreading of internet of things (IoTs). One of the crucial challenges of IoTs for healthcare is at the wireless sensors. Miniaturization of sensor node profile, minimizing power consumption as well as lowering down design/production cost of antenna, RF circuits and sensor modules have become the key issues for realizing more exciting applications in medical and healthcare fields that never seemed to be possible before. In this dissertation work, we first focus on electrically small antenna (ESA) design and fabrication for medical telemetry. A comprehensive analysis of the radiation properties of a novel electrically small folded ellipsoidal ESA is presented, showing its ability to self-resonate and impedance match without external components. It will benefit various size-restricted applications especially with wireless medical implants. The second focus is on healthcare sensors using ESA as the sensing agent, which saves the power and cost by eliminating the need of extra sensing modules. Specifically, miniaturized helix ESAs are integrated with drug reservoirs to function as wireless transponder sensors for real-time drug dosage monitoring. We also introduce a system level innovation of a passive wireless harmonic transponder/harmonic sniffer/frequency hopped interrogator based sensing system. The μL- liquid level resolution and absolute-accuracy passive sensing is demonstrated in the presence of strong direct coupling, background scatters, distance variance as well as near-filed human body movement interference. Furthermore, we investigate how modern ubiquitous wireless sensor networks could take advantage of sensitive nanostructure materials for enhanced performance. Here we propose a new paradigm of chemically-gated mixed modulation on a single homogeneous graphene device in which the chemical exposure directly modulates an electrical carrier signal. To make the device ubiquitously reusable, a method of precisely tuning the charge neutrality point (Vcnp) is introduced by electrochemical calibration with gate voltage pulse sequence. Such chemically gated graphene modulator can be potentially used in a harmonic transponder as a passive ubiquitous sensor node for chemical and bio sensing applications. Overall the research work presented in the dissertation will help enable cost and power-efficient wireless sensor networks in future healthcare IoTs.Electrical and Computer Engineerin

IoT Platform for COVID-19 Prevention and Control: A Survey

As a result of the worldwide transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has evolved into an unprecedented pandemic. Currently, with unavailable pharmaceutical treatments and vaccines, this novel coronavirus results in a great impact on public health, human society, and global economy, which is likely to last for many years. One of the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic is that a long-term system with non-pharmaceutical interventions for preventing and controlling new infectious diseases is desirable to be implemented. Internet of things (IoT) platform is preferred to be utilized to achieve this goal, due to its ubiquitous sensing ability and seamless connectivity. IoT technology is changing our lives through smart healthcare, smart home, and smart city, which aims to build a more convenient and intelligent community. This paper presents how the IoT could be incorporated into the epidemic prevention and control system. Specifically, we demonstrate a potential fog-cloud combined IoT platform that can be used in the systematic and intelligent COVID-19 prevention and control, which involves five interventions including COVID-19 Symptom Diagnosis, Quarantine Monitoring, Contact Tracing & Social Distancing, COVID-19 Outbreak Forecasting, and SARS-CoV-2 Mutation Tracking. We investigate and review the state-of-the-art literatures of these five interventions to present the capabilities of IoT in countering against the current COVID-19 pandemic or future infectious disease epidemics.Comment: 12 pages; Submitted to IEEE Internet of Things Journa

Adaptive Filtering for Heart Rate Signals

This work focused on the effects of suppressing the motion artifact of wrist photoplethysmographic heart rate signals. Monitoring of the heart can offer important insight with regard to health and wellness. The objective of the experiment conducted here was to recover the distorted signal resulting from body movement while measuring the heart rate signal non-invasively from the wrist. The class of filters, known as adaptive filters, that can extract meaningful information from the distorted signal, used predetermined initial conditions to equalize the signal distortion due to motion. These filters do not require prior knowledge about the system. Adaptive filters of LMS-type and RLS-type were used in this study to recover the distorted heart rate signal. This study also presented a comparison on short-range wireless technologies, such as Bluetooth and ANT+, that can be used for data transmission of the heart rate signal

Wearable devices and IoT applications for symptom detection, infection tracking, and diffusion containment of the COVID-19 pandemic: a survey

Until a safe and effective vaccine to fight the SARS-CoV-2 virus is developed and available for the global population, preventive measures, such as wearable tracking and monitoring systems supported by Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructures, are valuable tools for containing the pandemic. In this review paper we analyze innovative wearable systems for limiting the virus spread, early detection of the first symptoms of the coronavirus disease COVID-19 infection, and remote monitoring of the health conditions of infected patients during the quarantine. The attention is focused on systems allowing quick user screening through ready-to-use hardware and software components. Such sensor-based systems monitor the principal vital signs, detect symptoms related to COVID-19 early, and alert patients and medical staff. Novel wearable devices for complying with social distancing rules and limiting interpersonal contagion (such as smart masks) are investigated and analyzed. In addition, an overview of implantable devices for monitoring the effects of COVID-19 on the cardiovascular system is presented. Then we report an overview of tracing strategies and technologies for containing the COVID-19 pandemic based on IoT technologies, wearable devices, and cloud computing. In detail, we demonstrate the potential of radio frequency based signal technology, including Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Wi-Fi, and radio frequency identification (RFID), often combined with Apps and cloud technology. Finally, critical analysis and comparisons of the different discussed solutions are presented, highlighting their potential and providing new insights for developing innovative tools for facing future pandemics

A Wearable Platform for Patient Monitoring during Mass Casualty Incidents

Based on physiological data, intelligent algorithms can assist with the classification and recognition of the most severely impaired victims. This dissertation presents a new sensorbased triage platform with the main proposal to join different sensor and communications technologies into a portable device. This new device must be able to assist the rescue units along with the tactical planning of the operation. This dissertation discusses the implementation and the evaluation of the platform

Ambient-aware continuous care through semantic context dissemination

Background: The ultimate ambient-intelligent care room contains numerous sensors and devices to monitor the patient, sense and adjust the environment and support the staff. This sensor-based approach results in a large amount of data, which can be processed by current and future applications, e. g., task management and alerting systems. Today, nurses are responsible for coordinating all these applications and supplied information, which reduces the added value and slows down the adoption rate. The aim of the presented research is the design of a pervasive and scalable framework that is able to optimize continuous care processes by intelligently reasoning on the large amount of heterogeneous care data. Methods: The developed Ontology-based Care Platform (OCarePlatform) consists of modular components that perform a specific reasoning task. Consequently, they can easily be replicated and distributed. Complex reasoning is achieved by combining the results of different components. To ensure that the components only receive information, which is of interest to them at that time, they are able to dynamically generate and register filter rules with a Semantic Communication Bus (SCB). This SCB semantically filters all the heterogeneous care data according to the registered rules by using a continuous care ontology. The SCB can be distributed and a cache can be employed to ensure scalability. Results: A prototype implementation is presented consisting of a new-generation nurse call system supported by a localization and a home automation component. The amount of data that is filtered and the performance of the SCB are evaluated by testing the prototype in a living lab. The delay introduced by processing the filter rules is negligible when 10 or fewer rules are registered. Conclusions: The OCarePlatform allows disseminating relevant care data for the different applications and additionally supports composing complex applications from a set of smaller independent components. This way, the platform significantly reduces the amount of information that needs to be processed by the nurses. The delay resulting from processing the filter rules is linear in the amount of rules. Distributed deployment of the SCB and using a cache allows further improvement of these performance results

A Wearable Platform for Patient Monitoring during Mass Casualty Incidents

Based on physiological data, intelligent algorithms can assist with the classification and recognition of the most severely impaired victims. This book presents a new sensorbased triage platform with the main proposal to join different sensor and communications technologies into a portable device. This new device must be able to assist the rescue units along with the tactical planning of the operation. This work discusses the implementation and the evaluation of the platform