20 research outputs found
Analysis of Android Device-Based Solutions for Fall Detection
Falls are a major cause of health and psychological problems as well as
hospitalization costs among older adults. Thus, the investigation on automatic Fall
Detection Systems (FDSs) has received special attention from the research community
during the last decade. In this area, the widespread popularity, decreasing price, computing
capabilities, built-in sensors and multiplicity of wireless interfaces of Android-based
devices (especially smartphones) have fostered the adoption of this technology to deploy
wearable and inexpensive architectures for fall detection. This paper presents a critical and
thorough analysis of those existing fall detection systems that are based on Android devices.
The review systematically classifies and compares the proposals of the literature taking into
account different criteria such as the system architecture, the employed sensors, the detection
algorithm or the response in case of a fall alarms. The study emphasizes the analysis of the
evaluation methods that are employed to assess the effectiveness of the detection process.
The review reveals the complete lack of a reference framework to validate and compare the
proposals. In addition, the study also shows that most research works do not evaluate the
actual applicability of the Android devices (with limited battery and computing resources) to
fall detection solutions.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TEC2013-42711-
A characterization of the performance of Bluetooth 2.x + EDR technology in noisy environments
Bluetooth (BT) is by far the most popular shortrange
technology for the development of wireless personal
area networks and body area networks. Nowadays, BT 2.0
and 2.1 ? EDR are the most extended and implemented
versions of BT standard. This article presents an analytical
model that computes the packet delay of transmissions that
utilize this version of BT in noisy environments. The
model, which takes into account the packet retransmissions
caused by noise, is particularized to calculate the mean
packet delay as a function of the signal-to-noise ratio for
the different enhanced data rates provided by BT 2.0 and
2.1 specifications. Thus, the model permits evaluating the
efficiency of using these enhanced rates in the presence of a
certain noise level.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TEC2009-13763-C02-01Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TEC2013-42711-
Modeling of the Transmission Delay in Bluetooth Piconets under Serial Port Profile
Bluetooth is a key connectivity technology for
the deployment of wireless Personal Area Networks as far as
it is the most popular low power communication feature
incorporated in devices such as laptops or smartphones. This
paper proposes an analytical model to predict the delay of the
transmissions in Bluetooth piconets employing Serial Port
Profile (SPP), which is massively implemented by Bluetoothenabled
equipments. The characterization includes the impact
of the overhead and the segmentation imposed by the different
protocols involved in the transmission as well as the delay
provoked by the polling process that is executed to regulate
the activity of the different slaves in the piconet. The model
has been empirically evaluated and tested in actual Bluetooth
piconetsMinisterio de Educación y Ciencia TEC2009-13763-C02-0
On the Capability of Smartphones to Perform as Communication Gateways in Medical Wireless Personal Area Networks
This paper evaluates and characterizes the technical performance of medical
wireless personal area networks (WPANs) that are based on smartphones. For this purpose,
a prototype of a health telemonitoring system is presented. The prototype incorporates a
commercial Android smartphone, which acts as a relay point, or “gateway”, between a set
of wireless medical sensors and a data server. Additionally, the paper investigates if the
conventional capabilities of current commercial smartphones can be affected by their use
as gateways or “Holters” in health monitoring applications. Specifically, the profiling has
focused on the CPU and power consumption of the mobile devices. These metrics have
been measured under several test conditions modifying the smartphone model, the type of
sensors connected to the WPAN, the employed Bluetooth profile (SPP (serial port profile) or
HDP (health device profile)), the use of other peripherals, such as a GPS receiver, the impact
of the use of theWi-Fi interface or the employed method to encode and forward the data that
are collected from the sensors.Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia TEC2009-13763-C02-0
Analytical Characterisation of the Performance of Bluetooth Piconets Using Serial Port Profile
Bluetooth is a key connectivity technology for the deployment of
wireless Personal Area Networks as far as it is the most popular
low power communication feature incorporated in devices such as
laptops or smartphones. This paper proposes an analytical model to
predict the delay of the transmissions in Bluetooth piconets
employing Serial Port Profile (SPP), which is massively
implemented by Bluetooth-enabled equipments. The
characterization includes the impact of the overhead and the
segmentation imposed by the different protocols involved in the
transmission as well as the delay provoked by the polling process
that is executed to regulate the activity of the different slaves in the
piconet. The model has been empirically evaluated and tested in an
actual Bluetooth piconet.Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia TEC2009-13763-C02-0
Analytical Characterization of the Lowest Delay Bound in Bluetooth 2.0+EDR Transmissions
This paper presents an analytical model to compute
the minimum delay of Bluetooth 2.0 transmissions. The model,
which is focused on connections using Serial Port Profile (SPP),
characterizes in detail the effects of employing the Enhanced
Date Rates introduced by the new version of the standard, which
is widely implemented in most commercial Bluetooth interfaces.
The model has been empirically evaluated in a real piconet.Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia TEC2009-13763-C02-0
Analytical and empirical evaluation of the impact of Gaussian noise on the modulations employed by Bluetooth Enhanced Data Rates
Bluetooth (BT) is a leading technology for the deployment of wireless Personal Area Networks and Body Area
Networks. Versions 2.0 and 2.1 of the standard, which are massively implemented in commercial devices, improve
the throughput of the BT technology by enabling the so-called Enhanced Data Rates (EDR). EDRs are achieved by
utilizing new modulation techniques (π/4-DQPSK and 8-DPSK), apart from the typical Gaussian Frequency Shift
Keying modulation supported by previous versions of BT. This manuscript presents and validates a model to
characterize the impact of white noise on the performance of these modulations. The validation is systematically
accomplished in a testbed with actual BT interfaces and a calibrated white noise generator.Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia TEC2009-13763-C02-0
A Wireless Monitoring System for Pulse-oximetry Sensors
This paper presents a wireless medical monitoring
system. The system permits to receive and process in a
single concentrator node (e.g. a laptop or a simple
handheld device) the pulse-oximetry signals from one
ore several monitored patients without using any
wired infrastructure. The system, which is based on a
piconet of Bluetooth sensors, can retransmit the
medical signals by WLAN and GPRS.
The paper describes the practical application
scenarios in which this type of systems could be of
great utility.Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia TIC2003- 07953-C02-0
Comparison and Characterization of Android-Based Fall Detection Systems
Falls are a foremost source of injuries and hospitalization for seniors.
The adoption of automatic fall detection mechanisms can noticeably reduce the response
time of the medical staff or caregivers when a fall takes place. Smartphones are being
increasingly proposed as wearable, cost-effective and not-intrusive systems for fall detection.
The exploitation of smartphones’ potential (and in particular, the Android Operating System)
can benefit from the wide implantation, the growing computational capabilities and the
diversity of communication interfaces and embedded sensors of these personal devices.
After revising the state-of-the-art on this matter, this study develops an experimental
testbed to assess the performance of different fall detection algorithms that ground their
decisions on the analysis of the inertial data registered by the accelerometer of the
smartphone. Results obtained in a real testbed with diverse individuals indicate that the
accuracy of the accelerometry-based techniques to identify the falls depends strongly on
the fall pattern. The performed tests also show the difficulty to set detection acceleration
thresholds that allow achieving a good trade-off between false negatives (falls that remain
unnoticed) and false positives (conventional movements that are erroneously classified as
falls). In any case, the study of the evolution of the battery drain reveals that the extra
power consumption introduced by the Android monitoring applications cannot be neglected
when evaluating the autonomy and even the viability of fall detection systems.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TEC2009-13763-C02-0
Characterization of Bluetooth Packet Delay in Noisy Environments
This letter presents an analytical model to compute
the delay of Bluetooth transmissions with Serial Port
Profile (SPP) when interferences cause packet retransmissions.
In particular, the model takes into consideration the overhead
and segmentation introduced by the protocol stack as well as
the extra delay provoked by the retransmissions. The model
is empirically validated through the measurements of actual
Bluetooth connections.Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia TEC2006-12211-C02-0