Implementing and Evaluating a Wireless Body Sensor System for Automated Physiological Data Acquisition at Home

Advances in embedded devices and wireless sensor networks have resulted in new and inexpensive health care solutions. This paper describes the implementation and the evaluation of a wireless body sensor system that monitors human physiological data at home. Specifically, a waist-mounted triaxial accelerometer unit is used to record human movements. Sampled data are transmitted using an IEEE 802.15.4 wireless transceiver to a data logger unit. The wearable sensor unit is light, small, and consumes low energy, which allows for inexpensive and unobtrusive monitoring during normal daily activities at home. The acceleration measurement tests show that it is possible to classify different human motion through the acceleration reading. The 802.15.4 wireless signal quality is also tested in typical home scenarios. Measurement results show that even with interference from nearby IEEE 802.11 signals and microwave ovens, the data delivery performance is satisfactory and can be improved by selecting an appropriate channel. Moreover, we found that the wireless signal can be attenuated by housing materials, home appliances, and even plants. Therefore, the deployment of wireless body sensor systems at home needs to take all these factors into consideration.Comment: 15 page

Future of smart cardiovascular implants

Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death in Western society. Recent technological advances have opened the opportunity of developing new and innovative smart stent devices that have advanced electrical properties that can improve diagnosis and even treatment of previously intractable conditions, such as central line access failure, atherosclerosis and reporting on vascular grafts for renal dialysis. Here we review the latest advances in the field of cardiovascular medical implants, providing a broad overview of the application of their use in the context of cardiovascular disease rather than an in-depth analysis of the current state of the art. We cover their powering, communication and the challenges faced in their fabrication. We focus specifically on those devices required to maintain vascular access such as ones used to treat arterial disease, a major source of heart attacks and strokes. We look forward to advances in these technologies in the future and their implementation to improve the human condition

Resource Allocation in Wireless Networks with RF Energy Harvesting and Transfer

Radio frequency (RF) energy harvesting and transfer techniques have recently become alternative methods to power the next generation of wireless networks. As this emerging technology enables proactive replenishment of wireless devices, it is advantageous in supporting applications with quality-of-service (QoS) requirement. This article focuses on the resource allocation issues in wireless networks with RF energy harvesting capability, referred to as RF energy harvesting networks (RF-EHNs). First, we present an overview of the RF-EHNs, followed by a review of a variety of issues regarding resource allocation. Then, we present a case study of designing in the receiver operation policy, which is of paramount importance in the RF-EHNs. We focus on QoS support and service differentiation, which have not been addressed by previous literatures. Furthermore, we outline some open research directions.Comment: To appear in IEEE Networ

A Multifunctional Integrated Circuit Router for Body Area Network Wearable Systems

A multifunctional router IC to be included in the nodes of a wearable body sensor network is described and evaluated. The router targets different application scenarios, especially those including tens of sensors, embedded into textile materials and with high data-rate communication demands. The router IC supports two different functionality sets, one for sensor nodes and another for the base node, both based on the same circuit module. The nodes are connected to each other by means of woven thick conductive yarns forming a mesh topology with the base node at the center. From the standpoint of the network, each sensor node is a four port router capable of handling packets from destination nodes to the base node, with sufficient redundant paths. The adopted hybrid circuit and packet switching scheme significantly improve network performance in terms of end-to-end delay, throughput and power consumption. The IC also implements a highly precise, sub-microsecond one-way time synchronization protocol which is used for time stamping the acquired data. The communication module was implemented in a 4-metal, 0.35 μm CMOS technology. The maximum data rate of the system is 35 Mbps while supporting up to 250 sensors, which exceeds current BAN applications scenarios.This work was supported in part by the Fundação para a Ciéncia e a Tecnologia (FCT) (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) under Project PROLIMB PTDC/EEAELC/103683/2008 and through the Ph.D. Grant SFRH/BD/75324/2010, and in part by the CREaTION, FCT/MEC through national funds and co-funded by the FEDER-PT2020 partnership agreement under Project UIDB/EEA/50008/2020, Project CONQUEST (CMU/ECE/030/2017), Project COST CA15104, and ORCIP. (Corresponding author: Fardin Derogarian Miyandoab.)info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Design of a Customized multipurpose nano-enabled implantable system for in-vivo theranostics

The first part of this paper reviews the current development and key issues on implantable multi-sensor devices for in vivo theranostics. Afterwards, the authors propose an innovative biomedical multisensory system for in vivo biomarker monitoring that could be suitable for customized theranostics applications. At this point, findings suggest that cross-cutting Key Enabling Technologies (KETs) could improve the overall performance of the system given that the convergence of technologies in nanotechnology, biotechnology, micro&nanoelectronics and advanced materials permit the development of new medical devices of small dimensions, using biocompatible materials, and embedding reliable and targeted biosensors, high speed data communication, and even energy autonomy. Therefore, this article deals with new research and market challenges of implantable sensor devices, from the point of view of the pervasive system, and time-to-market. The remote clinical monitoring approach introduced in this paper could be based on an array of biosensors to extract information from the patient. A key contribution of the authors is that the general architecture introduced in this paper would require minor modifications for the final customized bio-implantable medical device

REISCH: incorporating lightweight and reliable algorithms into healthcare applications of WSNs

Healthcare institutions require advanced technology to collect patients' data accurately and continuously. The tradition technologies still suffer from two problems: performance and security efficiency. The existing research has serious drawbacks when using public-key mechanisms such as digital signature algorithms. In this paper, we propose Reliable and Efficient Integrity Scheme for Data Collection in HWSN (REISCH) to alleviate these problems by using secure and lightweight signature algorithms. The results of the performance analysis indicate that our scheme provides high efficiency in data integration between sensors and server (saves more than 24% of alive sensors compared to traditional algorithms). Additionally, we use Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) to validate the security procedures in our scheme. Security analysis results confirm that REISCH is safe against some well-known attacks

Improving practical sensitivity of energy optimized wake-up receivers: proof of concept in 65nm CMOS

We present a high performance low-power digital base-band architecture, specially designed for an energy optimized duty-cycled wake-up receiver scheme. Based on a careful wake-up beacon design, a structured wake-up beacon detection technique leads to an architecture that compensates for the implementation loss of a low-power wake-up receiver front-end at low energy and area costs. Design parameters are selected by energy optimization and the architecture is easily scalable to support various network sizes. Fabricated in 65nm CMOS, the digital base-band consumes 0.9uW (V_DD=0.37V) in sub-threshold operation at 250kbps, with appropriate 97% wake-up beacon detection and 0.04% false alarm probabilities. The circuit is fully functional at a minimum V_DD of 0.23V at f_max=5kHz and 0.018uW power consumption. Based on these results we show that our digital base-band can be used as a companion to compensate for front-end implementation losses resulting from the limited wake-up receiver power budget at a negligible cost. This implies an improvement of the practical sensitivity of the wake-up receiver, compared to what is traditionally reported.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Sensors Journa

A system architecture, processor, and communication protocol for secure implants

Secure and energy-efficient communication between Implantable Medical Devices (IMDs) and authorized external users is attracting increasing attention these days. However, there currently exists no systematic approach to the problem, while solutions from neighboring fields, such as wireless sensor networks, are not directly transferable due to the peculiarities of the IMD domain. This work describes an original, efficient solution for secure IMD communication. A new implant system architecture is proposed, where security and main-implant functionality are made completely decoupled by running the tasks onto two separate cores. Wireless communication goes through a custom security ASIP, called SISC (Smart-Implant Security Core), which runs an energy-efficient security protocol. The security core is powered by RF-harvested energy until it performs external-reader authentication, providing an elegant defense mechanism agai