This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been

fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/JSEN.2019.2903482, IEEE
Sensors Journal

A Low Power Fall Sensing Technology Based on

FD-CNN
Jian He, Zihao Zhang, Xiaoyi Wang, Shenqi Yang

 environment, they are often grouped under context-based fall

Abstract—The Bluetooth-based wearable fall detection
technology faces problems such as short transmission distance,
easily interfered by obstacles and high-power consumption. To
address these issues, we developed a sensor board integrated with
low power ZigBee and MPU6050, which can sample and cache
3-axial acceleration and angular velocity data in sleep mode; we
also designed an interrupt-driven algorithm that can collect and
transmit the data to the receiving end (namely server) with low
power consumption via ZigBee. Additionally, the received data are
normalized according to the range specification and cached into a
sliding window by the server. Meanwhile, the cached data are
mapped into RGB bitmap, and a Fall Detection Convolutional
Neural Network (FD-CNN) is designed and trained using the open
dataset to identify falls from activities of daily livings according to
bitmap. The experimental results show that the average accuracy of
this method is 98.61%, while its average sensitivity and specificity
are 98.62% and 99.80% respectively. It takes advantage of the
strong networking capacity of ZigBee, and the strong computing
power of the server, which is very suitable for fall sensing in elderly
community with low power and high accuracy.
Index Terms—Fall detection, ZigBee, Sliding window, CNN
I. INTRODUCTION
F all-induced injuries are the primary cause of hospitalization
and death among the elderly globally. According to the U.S.
Center for Disease Control (CDC), more than 30% of elderly
persons over the age of 65 fall at least once a year in the United
States, leading to an associated medical expense of over $30
billion [1]. China has now become an aging society.
Approximately more than 40 million elderly persons over 60
incur injuries from falls each year. Fall-induced injuries not only
cause physical damage to the elderly, but also negatively impact
their mental health, thereby affecting their quality of life [2]. In
order to eliminate the risk of fall-induced injuries among the
elderly, researchers have developed different fall detection
technologies.
Existing fall detection technologies can be roughly divided
into three categories based on sensor type [3]: wearable sensors [4],
ambient sensors [5, 6], and vision-based sensors [7]. As sensors of
the latter two types are required to be deployed in a particular
This work was supported by the National Nature Science Foundation of China
(no. 61602016).
J. He is now with Beijing Engineering Research Center for IoT Software and
Systems. He is an associate professor at Beijing University of Technology,
Beijing 100124, China (e-mail: Jianhee@bjut.edu.cn).
Z. Zhang is a master student at School of Software Engineering, Beijing
University of Technology, Beijing 100124, China. (e-mail:
s201625056@emails.bjut.edu.cn)
X. Wang is now with the Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Future
Internet Technology, Beijing 100124, China (e-mail: wxy@bjut.edu.cn).
S. Yang is an adjunct professor in the Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for
Future Internet Technology, Beijing 100124, China (e-mail: syang@bjut.edu.cn).
detection technology. References [8] and [9] both discussed
context-based fall detection systems. Although these systems are
of high accuracy and implement straightforward motion capture,
the sensor deployment and detection algorithms are complex. In
addition, the monitoring range is rather limited, and the user’s
privacy might even be exposed.
With the development of microelectromechanical systems
(MEMS), researchers have integrated inertial sensors into small
wearable devices to achieve fall detection [10,11]. The
MEMS-based fall detection method features a low deployment
cost, environmental compatibility, and user-privacy protection.
Thus, it has become a popular research field in fall detection
technology [12]. The implementation of MEMS-based fall
detection can be categorized as follows:
(1) Motion data is directly transmitted to a host computer with
a strong processing capacity, at which the fall detection
algorithm is implemented. For example, in the RAReFall system
developed by Gjoreski et al., modules with integrated
accelerometer are placed on the subject’s abdomen and right
thigh. 3-axial acceleration data collected by the modules are
transmitted to a laptop via Bluetooth, and fall is determined by
the difference between the maximum and the minimum of the
acceleration in the sliding window being greater than a threshold
value [13]. Benocci et al. constructed a ZigBee-based 3-axial
acceleration sensing module and transferred the acceleration
stream data to the host via ZigBee [14]. Since the processing unit
in the module must continuously collect data and transmit them
to the host wirelessly, the main drawback of this approach is
great energy consumption. In addition, given a large amount of
data transmission, network delay is highly likely to occur.
(2) A fall detection algorithm is implemented directly on
wearable devices with limited resources and power consumption.
For instance, Guanyi et al. used a support vector machine to
determine the threshold of the acceleration and angular velocity
of falling, and designed a system for detecting and preventing
falls by using 3-axial accelerometers, gyroscopes, and airbags [15].
Narayanan et al. implemented a pendant-shaped fall detection
device using a 3-axial accelerometer and a barometer [16]. Owing
to the limited resources of wearable devices, simple algorithms
such as threshold estimation are usually adopted. However, the
accuracy of fall detection in such devices is poor because of the
low complexity of the algorithm. Moreover, this method has a
high requirement on the algorithm’s power consumption.
(3) Data are extracted and preprocessed in wearable devices
and then transmitted to a host computer with high computing
capacity. For example, Yuan et al. designed an interrupt-driven
fall detection module by combining interrupt method with
threshold method. This module sent activity data to a computer
via Bluetooth and the computer classified falls from daily

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/JSEN.2019.2903482, IEEE
Sensors Journal

activities through a decision-tree algorithm [17]. This approach is Cartesian coordinate system is established in accordance with the
probably the most promising, and it effectively utilizes edge replacement direction of the sensor (Fig. 1).
computing, and more and more researchers are working in this
x
area. Yet, this model is still facing some challenges such as x ax
ɷx
designing a simple preprocessing algorithm, compressing raw ax
data into small feature values, and extending battery usage time. ay ay
y y ɷy
o o
In a previous study, the third approach was used to develop a
az z az
wearable vest incorporating 3-axial accelerometer, gyroscope,
ɷz
and Bluetooth. The acceleration and angular velocity of human z

activities were collected in real time by a sensor board in the vest.
Corresponding signal vector norms of acceleration and angular
velocity were calculated and then sent to a mobile phone and fall
detection and alarm were actualized using the k nearest neighbor
(kNN) algorithm on the mobile phone [18]. The following issues
were identified during the use of this system: (1) The
transmission distance of Bluetooth is short (approximately 10 m),
and its ability to penetrate walls is weak, so the elderly are
required to carry mobile phones to use the system, which is
Fig.1. The motion model of human activity.
In Fig. 1, the left-hand panel shows the coordinate system of
acceleration, and 𝑎 , 𝑎 , and 𝑎 denote the acceleration along
the x, y, and z axis, respectively. The right-hand panel shows the
angular velocity of the human body and the coordinate system of
3-dimensional angles. ɷ , ɷ , and ɷ denote the angular
velocity of the body around the x, y, and z axis, respectively.
Interrupt
Control
LEDs Push button

Interrupt Interrupt
inconvenient, and not suitable for the use in elderly communities; RF transceiver Data
CC 2530
Microcontroller
Data
Control
Accelerometer
Control
(2) data need to be sent by the wearable vest in real time, which Real-time clock
Interrupt
Data
Data
Gyroscope
Control
leads to great Bluetooth power consumption (a 600-mAh lithium Control MPU 6050
power
battery can only provide power for 6 hours); (3) there are signal Regulator
power
Battery

drift errors on the gyroscope, and voltage fluctuations are
generated by the 3-axial accelerometer in the motion state.
These factors will affect the accuracy and effectiveness of the
fall detection algorithm. In this work, low-power consumption
ZigBee and MPU6050, which can collect and cache data in sleep
mode, are utilized for the sensor board. In addition, an
interrupt-driven motion data acquisition and transmission
algorithm is carefully designed. At receiving end, the server
normalizes the received raw data according to the range
specification and caches them into a sliding window. The cached
data are mapped into bitmap, and FD-CNN is designed to
identify falls from activities of daily livings (ADLs).
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In Section II, the
human motion model, and the algorithm for human activity data
acquisition and transmission are presented. In section III, the
technology for normalization and visualization of human activity
data is introduced. The FD-CNN is introduced in detail in section
IV. The experiment and its analysis are discussed in section V.
The conclusion and our future works are presented in Section VI.
II. LOW POWER MOTION SENSING TECHNOLOGY
In this section, the hardware structure of the sensor board
integrated with MPU6050 and ZigBee is introduced at first, and a
low power algorithm for human activity data acquisition and
transmission is designed.
A. Motion Sensing Technology
In the course of a movement, a human body’s acceleration and
angular velocity change in real time. In a study by Erdogan et al.
[19]
, the upper torso of the human body (i.e., above the waist and
below the neck) is proved to be the optimal place to acquire
acceleration data and to distinguish falls from other daily
activities. Considering the comfort of the wearable device and
the reliability of the system, the sensor board is placed at the
waist of the custom vest, and a human motion model based on the
(a) The architecture of the sensor board. (b) The size of the sensor board.
Fig.2 The sensor board.
Based on the human motion model, the sensor board which
mainly consists of a CC2530 microcontroller, a MPU6050
sensor, ZigBee radio-frequency and power management
modules is designed. Fig. 2 shows the architecture of the sensor
board. The dimensions of the sensor board are 30mm × 30mm ×
5 mm, which is slightly bigger than 1-dollar coin. The size of the
module makes it suitable for the placement at the waist of the
wearable vest to collect motion data. The transmission rate of the
ZigBee module is 115200 baud, with a maximum transmission
distance of 100 m. A 3-axial MEMS gyroscope, accelerometer,
and expandable digital motion processor (DMP) are integrated
into the MPU-6050. The measurement range of the gyroscope is
up to ±2000°/s, while the range of the accelerometer is up to ±16
g. Since the frequency of human activity is usually less than 20
Hz, the sampling frequency is set to 100 Hz to collect the user
activity data from accelerometers and gyroscopes.
The MPU-6050 contains a 1-kB first in, first out (FIFO)
register as a data cache. Meanwhile, its DMP could read data
from the gyroscope and accelerometer in sleep mode and cache
them into the FIFO buffer. Since there is no need to access the
microcontroller and ZigBee radio frequency, the mode is low
power consumption. Besides, the MPU6050 has a programmable
interrupt system which supports free-fall, zero-motion, and FIFO
overflow interrupts [20]. Among them, the MPU6050 uses
FF_THR register to set the threshold of free fall. If the measured
3-axial accelerations are within the threshold, the sampling value
is ignored, else a free-fall interrupt will be triggered and a flag
will be generated. The MPU6050 accelerometer has a
configurable digital high-pass filter (DHPF), a zero-motion
interrupt will be generated when the acceleration read by the
DHPF is less than the threshold. The ZRMOT_THR register is
used to set the zero-motion threshold, meanwhile, the

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ZRMOT_DUR register is used to set the zero-motion interrupt #----------F0 state-----------------------------

duration. The FIFO_CNT register is used to set the data capacity SetThrethold(FF_THT,ZMOT_THR,FIFO_CNT);
cached by the FIFO buffer. FIFO overflow will occur when the SetSampleFreq(100Hz);
amount of cached data in the FIFO is greater than the set value. SetBaudRate(115200);
CleanFIFO();
B. Algorithm for Data Acquisition and Transmission Enable(FreeFall, ZeroMotion,FIFO overflow)
In the event of falling, the center of the body descends rapidly, #-----------F1 state---------------------------
and the accelerometer experiences a brief weight-loss phase. At DmpRead(ax,ay,az,wx,wy,wz);
the same time, the output acceleration quickly declines to zero, SaveFIFO(ax,ay,az,wx,wy,wz);
which is captured by the free-fall interrupt. Besides, the if ZeroMotion
if FifoOverflow
acceleration of human daily activities is usually greater than 0.5
UpdateFIFO(Data);
g, and people usually fall for less than 2s. Hence, by setting a
else goto F1
reasonable threshold for free-fall, zero-motion and FIFO else
overflow interrupts, the human activity and fall data can be low #----------F2 state-----------------------------
power collected by the CC2530 in real time. For an example, if not FreeFall
when zero-motion interrupts are detected, both the CC2530 and if FiFoOver
MPU6050 are put into sleep mode, the 3-axial acceleration and UpdateFIFO(Data);
angular velocity are collected by the DMP and stored into the goto F1
FIFO buffer. At this point, access to the CC2530 and ZigBee else goto F1
radio frequency is not required, thereby reducing the module’s else
power consumption. Since the data sampling frequency of the Activate();
SendFIFO(Data);
sensor board is 100 Hz, the threshold parameters for free-fall,
CleanFIFO();
zero-motion, and FIFO overflow interrupts shown in Table 1 is
goto F1
set according to reference [17]. Based on the threshold settings,
an interrupt-driven human activity data sensing and transmission Fig. 3 The pseudocode of the algorithm for collecting and transmitting data.
algorithm is designed.
TABLE Ⅰ III. MAPPING ACTIVITY DATA INTO BITMAP FOR FD-CNN
INTERRUPT THRESHOLD SETTINGS OF THE MPU6050.
Interrupt name Register name Threshold value
Since the sampling frequency is 100 Hz, and the time from
FF_THR 0.5625 g falling down to touching the ground is usually less than 2
Free fall
FF_DUR 20 ms seconds, as a result, a 2-seconds sliding window at the server is
ZRMOT_THR 0.5g selected to cache the 3-axial acceleration and angular velocity
Zero-motion
ZRMOT_DUR 1000ms
data. Meanwhile, the way to map the human activity data into the
FIFO overflow FIFO_CNT 600
bitmap for FD-CNN is presented in this section.
Fig. 3 is the pseudocode of the algorithm for collecting and
A. The Visualization of the Activity Data
transmitting human activity data described by a finite-state
machine. Each state in Fig. 3 is defined as follows:
F0: initialization state. The FIFO buffer is initialized and the
data sampling frequency is set to 100 Hz. Free-fall, zero-motion,
and FIFO overflow interrupts are set to enable status. The system
enters low-power mode, i.e., F1. （0,0）

Acceleration
F1: zero-motion state. 3-axial acceleration and angular （0,0）
sensor data
（0,0） Acceleration
velocity data are collected and cached into the FIFO buffer by the Y-axial acceleration
Z-axial acceleration
Gyroscope sensor
sensor data
Acceleration
data
X-axial acceleration
DMP. If a FIFO overflow interrupt is triggered, the data in the sensor data sensor
Gyroscope
data （19,19）
Z-axial angular velocity
Gyroscope sensor
FIFO buffer will be updated by the DMP according to the X-axial angular velocity
Y-axial angular velocity
data （19,19）

principle of first in first out, and the zero-motion interrupt flag （19,19）

will be reset. Otherwise, if the zero-motion interrupt lasts longer
than 1 s, the FIFO buffer will be updated, and the zero-motion
interrupt flag is reset to continue the low-power mode.
F2: active state. If a free-fall interrupt occurs, and it lasts more
than 40ms, the data stored in the FIFO buffer will be sent to the
server via ZigBee. Otherwise, if the FIFO overflow interrupt
occurs, the module will send the data in the FIFO buffer to the
server via ZigBee, and clean the FIFO data and return to F1. Else
the FIFO buffer will be updated according to the principle of first
in first out, and then return to F1.
Fig.4 Schematic illustration of mapping 3- axial data into RGB bitmap.
At the server, the sliding window caches human activity data
for 2 seconds, of which there are 400 3-axial accelerations and
angular velocities, respectively. If the 3-axes of the human
motion model are considered as the 3 channels of an RGB image,
the value of the XYZ axial data can be mapped into the value of
the RGB channel data in an RGB image respectively. Namely,
each 3-axial data can be converted into an RGB pixel. The 400
pieces of 3-axial data cached in the sliding window can be
viewed as a bitmap with the size of 20 or 20 pixels. Fig. 4
schematic illustrates the way to map 3-trail accelerations and
angular velocities into the bitmap. In Fig. 4, the first 200 data of

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the bitmap are 3 axial accelerations, and the latter 200 are 3 axial
angular velocities. Namely, the data from (0, 0) to (9, 19) are
3-axial accelerations, and from (10, 10) to (19, 19) are 3-axial
angular velocities.
Because the range of image data is from 0 to 255, and the
ranges of accelerometer and gyroscope data are different, the
data of acceleration and angular velocity are normalized to the
range of 0 ~ 255 according to Equation (1). (a) Acceleration of Fall. (b) Angular velocity of Fall.
255  (Value  Range) （1）
Result 
2  Range
Range is the range value of accelerator or gyroscope. Value is
the measured value. The calculated Result is a float value, and it
is converted down to an integer value. For example, an
acceleration data of which 𝑎 , 𝑎 , and 𝑎 are 8.302,-9.532, and
0.962 respectively. The range value of the accelerator is 16g. The (c) Acceleration of Walk. (d) Angular velocity of Walk.
calculated Result is as follows.
result_x = (8.302+16)*255/32 = 193
result_y = (-9.532+16)*255/32 = 45
result_z = (0.962+16)*255/32 = 118
That is, the calculated Result is (193, 45, 118).

(e) Acceleration of Jog. (f) Angular velocity of Jog.

(a) Normalized accelerations. (b) Normalized angular velocities.

(i) Acceleration of Go-upstairs. (j) Angular velocity of Go-upstairs.

(c) Raw accelerations. (d) Raw angular velocities.

Fig.5 Comparison on the raw and normalized data of Jump
Fig. 5 compares the line diagram of the 2 seconds raw 3-axial
accelerations and angular velocities for Jump with those (k) Acceleration of Stand-up. (l) Angular velocity of Stand-up.
normalized 3-axial data. In Fig. 5, (c) and (d) are the raw 3-axial
accelerations and angular velocities respectively, (a) and (b) are
the normalized 3-axial accelerations angular velocities
respectively. It can be seen that the range specification only
magnifies the raw data on the longitudinal axis, but keeps the
waveform and variation of the raw data.
B. Comparison Between Falls and ADLs (m) Acceleration of Go-downstairs. (n) Angular velocity of
Go-downstairs.
On the basis of the range normalization of activity data, 7
kinds of daily activities (i.e. Walk, Jog, Go-upstairs,
Go-downstairs, Jump, Stand-up, Sit-down), and Fall are
compared and analyzed.
Fig. 6 shows the line chart of a 2-second acceleration, angular
velocity data of fall and 6 kinds of daily activities (the line chart
of Jump is shown in Fig.5). It can be seen from Fig. 6 the 3-axial
acceleration and angular velocity of Walk, Jog and Jump show
the periodic variation. Among them, Jog and continuous Jump (o) Acceleration of Sit-down. (p) Angular velocity of Sit-down.
are similar in the acceleration data, but the trend of the angular Fig. 6 The acceleration and angular velocity line chart of ADLs and Fall
velocity is different with each other. The x-axial acceleration of x-acceleration of Sit-down rapidly increases from bottom to peak.
Stand-up rapidly decreases from peak to bottom, while the Fig. 6 shows that both the value and direction of the acceleration

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and angular velocity of fall are quite different from those of other
ADLs. Hence, falls can be distinguished from other ADLs by
selecting appropriate classification algorithms.
(a) The bitmap of Fall. (b) The bitmap of Walk.
(c) The bitmap of Jog. (d) The bitmap of Jump.
(e) The bitmap of Go-upstairs. (f) The bitmap of Stand-up.
(g) The bitmap of Go-downstairs. (h) The bitmap of Sit-down.
Fig.7 The bitmaps of ADLs and Fall.
Fig. 7 shows the corresponding bitmaps after converting the
data of fall and daily activities in Fig. 6 into RGB pixels. From
Fig. 7, it can be found that the bitmap of fall is different from that
of daily activities, which provides the basis for using
classification algorithm based on image recognition to identify
falls from ADLs. CNN shows excellent recognition accuracy for
image detection and recognition, and LeNet[21] operating directly
on 32 ⅹ 32 pixel image has been succeeded on character
recognition. Therefore, a CNN-based algorithm for falls
detection (namely FD-CNN algorithm) according to the
architecture of LeNet is designed.
IV. FALL SENSING ALGORITHM
Fig. 8 shows the architecture of FD-CNN, which has two
convolutional layers, two subsampling layers, and two
fully-connected layers (not including the input).
A. The Architecture of FD-CNN
In Fig.8, the convolutional layer is labeled as Cx, the
subsample the subsampling layer is labeled as Sx, and the fully
connected layer is labeled as Fx, where x is the index of the layer.
The input is a 3 channels 20ⅹ20 RGB image, and each pixel
value is normalized according to Equation (2). That is, each pixel
value ranging from 0 to 255 is normalized from -1 to 1. This not
only speeds up the network training, but also improves the
accuracy of the network.
value  2
scaled value   1 （2）
255
C1 layer is a convolutional layer with 32 feature maps.
Before convolution, each input data is expanded by padding edge,
the size of expanded input is 22x22x3. The padding edge can
preserve more features of the input bitmap. The size of the
convolutional kernel is 5x5x3, only one common convolution
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kernel is used in each feature map. The convolution kernel
strides one pixel at a time, the size of the feature map is 18x18.
Each convolution kernel has 5x5x3 join parameters and a bias,
namely, it has 76 parameters, and each unit is activated
according to Equation (3) (Rectified Linear Unit, ReLU) after
the convolution. C1 contains 2432 trainable parameters.
f ( x )   0,x ,xx00 (3)
S2 layer is a sub-sampling layer with 32 feature maps. Before
sub-sampling, each feature map of C1 is expanded by padding
edge, so the size of each expanded feature map is 20x20. Each
unit in each feature map is connected to a 2x2 neighborhood in
the corresponding expanded feature map, and max-pooling is
adopted to do sub-sampling. Since the receptive fields are
non-overlapping, the size of each feature map is 10x10.
C3 layer is a convolutional layer with 64 feature maps.
Before convolution, each feature map of S2 is expanded by
padding edge, the size of each expanded feature map is 12x12.
The size of the convolutional kernel is 5x5x32, only one
common convolution kernel is used in each feature map. The
convolution kernel strides one pixel at a time, the size of each
feature map in C3 is 8x8. Each convolution kernel has 5x5x32
join parameters and a bias, namely, it has 801 parameters, and
each unit is activated according to ReLU after the convolution.
C3 contains 51264 trainable parameters.
S4 layer is a sub-sampling layer with 64 feature maps. Before
sub-sampling, each feature map of C3 is expanded by padding
edge, so the size of each expanded feature map is 10x10. Each
unit in each feature map is connected to a 2x2 neighborhood in
the corresponding expanded feature map, and max-pooling is
adopted to do sub-sampling. Since the receptive fields are
non-overlapping, the size of each feature map is 5x5.
F5 contains 512 units, and is fully connected to C4. Each unit
is activated according to ReLU after fully connected. The
dropout is adopted to prevent over-fitting during network
training.
Finally, the output layer is fully connected to F5 with 8 units.
Softmax is used to compute the probability of each unit, and the
one with the maximum probability will be the predicting result.
B. FD-CNN Training
The dataset published on SisFall [22] and MobiFall [23] were
first extracted and transformed according to the coordinate system
of Fig. 1, so as to ensure the data being the same coordinate.
Besides, the transformed data were normalized by the range
specification, and mapped into a bitmap to form the open dataset.
Among the open dataset, 1000 sets of Walk, Jump, Jog,
Go-upstairs and Go-downstairs, and 500 sets of Fall were
extracted from MobiFall respectively; 1000 sets of Sit-down and
Stand-up, and 500 sets of Fall were extracted from SisFall. Due to
the shortage of falls, the forward falls, backward falls, the left falls
and the right falls were not distinguished with each other. They
were all classified as falls. In addition, the experimental
environment shown in Fig. 9 was used to obtain data of 7 types of
daily activities and falls through 20 subjects to build the
experimental dataset, of which included 200 sets of Walk, Jump,
Jog, Go-upstairs, Go-downstairs, Sit-down, Stand-up and Fall
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Sensors Journal

Input data C1:Feature maps S2:Feature maps C3:Feature maps S4:Feature maps
20*20*3 32@18*18 32@10*10 64@8*8 64@5*5 F5:layer 512
3 Output:8
32

32 64 64
20
5 10
18 5
5 5 5
8
5
10 Classes
8 Number
20 18 512
Convolution Layer 1 Maxpool Layer 1 Convolution Layer 2 Maxpool Layer 2
kernel size:2*2*1 kernel size:5*5*32*64 kernel size:2*2*1 Fully Connected Fully Connected
kernel size:5*5*3*32
strides:1*2*2*1 strides:1*2*2*1 Layer 1 Layer 2

Fig.8 The FD-CNN architecture.

respectively. The research team randomly selected 90% of the E76 with 8G memory, the operating system running on it is
data from the open and experimental dataset as the training Ubuntu 14.04. The ZigBee module on the server was configured
samples and the rest as the test samples, of which is shown in as a coordinator with 115200 bps baud rate. The data received by
Table 2. Among them, there were 1080 sets of training samples the server were normalized according to the range specification,
for each type of daily activities and falls, namely a total of 8640 and then added to the sliding window which caches 2 seconds
sets of training samples; there were 120 sets of test samples for 3-axial accelerations and angular velocities according to the
each type of daily activities and falls, i.e. a total of 960 sets of test FIFO principle. Meanwhile, the 3-axial acceleration and angular
samples. velocity data cached in the sliding window were mapped into a
TABLE Ⅱ bitmap, and the FD-CNN running on the server was utilized to
THE DATASET FOR TRAINING AND TEST.
Activity Training samples Test samples classify falls from ADLs.
Walk 1080 120
Jog 1080 120
Jump 1080 120 3G/4G call
TCP/IP Family
Server Internet
Go-upstairs 1080 120 Zigbee Coordinate
Go-downstairs 1080 120 SMS
Stand-up 1080 120 ZigBee
Service
Sit-down 1080 120 Zigbee router
Fall 1080 120
Total 8640 960
ZigBee
The FD-CNN network was trained through the 8640 training ……
custom vest custom vest
samples. During the training, the batch size was set to 64, and
Adam algorithm was used to optimize the network. The learning Fig. 9 The experimental environment for fall detection
rate was 0.001 and the number of training steps was 10000. In The experimental environment was constructed according to
addition, the softmax was added to the final full connection layer Fig. 9. The data of ADLs —including Walk, Jog, Go-upstairs,
of the network to calculate the probability of the output results. Go-downstairs, Jump, Stand-up, Sit-down, as well as Fall were
Finally, the loss was calculated according to Equation (4). Based collected. A total of 20 subjects enrolled, including 17 males and
on the loss, further training was carried out. When the network 3 females, aged from 24 to 48. Each subject was asked to
training iterated over 8 epoch, the accuracy of the verification set complete each required action 10 times. Hence, a total of 1600
was maintained at 99.8%, and the accuracy of subsequent sets of data (namely experimental dataset) were collected in the
training was kept stable. So the network training was completed experiment, with 200 sets for each action. For safety reasons,
and saved. people over the age of 50 were not invited to participate. As
Classes
  yi' log( y ) shown in Table 2, 90% of the experimental and open dataset
loss  i （4） were randomly selected as training samples, and the rest as test
Classes samples.
V. EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS B. Results Analysis
A fall detection system based on FD-CNN was built, and the The test samples were used on the trained FD-CNN for
experiment was carried out. This section introduces the classification testing, of which the activities were divided into 8
experiment and the analysis of its result. categories (namely Walk, Jog, Go-upstairs, Go-downstairs,
A. Experiment Design Jump, Stand-up, Sit-down and Fall). The test results showed that
the average accuracy was 98.61%, while the average sensitivity
Fig. 9 shows the architecture of the fall detection system based and specificity were 98.62%, and 99.80% respectively.
on FD-CNN. The sensor board integrated with the MPU6050 The training samples and test samples after normalization
and ZigBee was configured as an end node with 115200 bps baud according to (2) were also input to Weka, so as to compare the
rate, and was placed in the waist of the wearable vest to collect performance on the FD-CNN and other classification algorithms
the 3-axial acceleration and angular velocity data of human integrated into Weka. Table 3 shows performance comparison
activity in real time. The data cached in the FIFO buffer were among FD-CNN and other algorithms. It can be seen from Table
then sent to the server integrated with ZigBee according to the 3 that the accuracy, average sensitivity and specificity of
algorithm presented in Section II. The server is a ThinkCentre FD-CNN are the highest. The accuracy, sensitivity and

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/JSEN.2019.2903482, IEEE
Sensors Journal

specificity of FD-CNN are 2.71%, 2.71% and 0.38% the prominent error term in the short cluster times, whereas it is
respectively higher than those of Random Forest algorithm the drift rate-ramp term in the long cluster times. To solve the
which is the highest one in Weka, and 19.01%, 17.46% and measurement noise, reference [25] introduced Kalman filter to
3.68% higher than those of SMO algorithm which is the lowest preprocess the raw data so as to reduce noise, and then used
one in Weka. Meanwhile, FD-CNN algorithm running on a PC Bayes network to distinguish falls from 5 kinds of ADLs. The
with GTX1080 graphics card only spends 0.13s to classify, experiment showed that it distinguished simulated falls from
which can fully fit the need of real-time fall detection. ADLs with the accuracy of 95.67%, while sensitivity and
TABLE Ⅲ specificity were 99.0% and 95.0%, respectively. However, the
THE COMPARISON ON DIFFERENT ALGORITHMS WITH FD-CNN. FD-CNN gets higher accuracy, especially its average sensitivity
Algorithm Accuracy Avg. Sensitivity Avg. Specificity Test Time(s) and specificity of the fall detection are up to 100%. The reason is
FD-CNN 98.61% 98.62% 99.80% 0.13 that the normalization used in this paper according to Equation (1)
Lazy IBK 89.61% 88.73% 98.54% 11.5 and (2) can reduce the gross influences of measurement noise
Naive Bayes 87.28% 82.73% 97.92% 0.27
Bayes Net 82.72% 88.01% 98.04% 0.62
and anomaly time series. For example, Equation (2) which
Random Forest 95.90% 95.91% 99.42% 10.18 transforms the pixel value range of acceleration ranging from
Random Tree 81.20% 81.12% 96.32% 0.06 0~255 to -1 ~1, can eliminate the effects of measurement noise.
Bagging 93.12% 93.64% 98.73% 0.04 Hence, it improves the accuracy of fall detection. Besides, the
Ripper 86.34% 86.31% 97.30% 1.94
SMO 79.60% 81.16% 96.12% 0.2 padding edge expanded at the convolutional layer makes sure
TABLE Ⅳ that each pixel can be calculated twice at least. As a result, more
THE RESULT OF ONLINE TEST. features of the bitmap can be preserved. ReLU being the
Activity Accuracy Sensitivity Specificity activation function in FD-CNN, has advantages of sparse
Fall 99.77% 100.00% 99.74% activation, fewer vanishing gradient problems, and efficient
Walk 100.00% 100.00% 100.00%
Jog 99.54% 100.0% 99.47%
computation. It took only 0.13 seconds to do the test under a
Jump 99.31% 96.77% 99.73% Lenovo ThinkCenter m6200t with an i5 CPU, 8G memory, and
Go-upstairs 98.85% 95.91% 99.22% GTX-970 graphical card. In addition, the effectiveness of deep
Go-downstairs 98.85% 92.98% 99.73%
Stand-up 99.31% 93.87% 100.00%
ANNs has been demonstrated in many fields besides image
Sit-down 99.31% 100.00% 99.19% classification, such as natural language processing, and transfer
Average 97.47% 97.44% 99.63% learning [26]. Consequently, studies on deep-learning based
solutions for human activity recognition (HAR) via wearable
6 graduate students were invited to wear the vest integrated
sensors have multiplied for the past few years [27]. For example,
with the sensor board so as to do the online experiment. Table 4
shows that the average accuracy is 97.47%, while the average Ordonez [28] introduced deep convolutional and Long-Short-
sensitivity and specificity are 97.44%, and 99.63% respectively. Term-Memory (LSTM) recurrent neural networks for
Besides the average sensitivity and specificity of the fall multimodal wearable activity recognition, which mainly focused
detection are 100.00%, and 99.74% respectively. on recognition modes of locomotion and postures, especially
The sensor board was integrated with a 600mAH battery in sporadic gestures (such as open/close door, open/close fridge,
order to test its power efficiency. Firstly, the sensor board was etc.). Frédéric et al. [29] carried out on the OPPORTUNITY[30]
designed to send the data stored in the FIFO buffer every 0.8 and UniMiB-SHAR[31] datasets, and proved the effectiveness of
seconds to simulate the continuous motion of the human body. hybrid deep-learning architectures involving convolutional and
The test proved that the sensor board could continuously work LSTM for HAR. However, there are periodic activities (such as
more than 30 hours in this mode. On the other hand, the same falls, stand up, go down, etc.), and sporadic gestures (e.g. open
600 mAH battery in reference [18] could only work for 6 hours. drawer) together, its accuracy is about 92.21, which is lower than
Secondly, two subjects (one male, one female) were selected to the method presented in this paper. Additionally, the
put on a wearable vest integrated the sensor board to carry out experimental result from reference [28] showed that 2 seconds
their daily work in the laboratory from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. every sliding window is better than those of 1 and 3 seconds, it is one of
day, in order to test the power consumption of the sensor board in the reasons that the size of the sliding window in this paper is 2
daily work situations. The test results showed that the sensor seconds.
board could continuously work more than 10 days, namely it
could continuously work more than 140 hours. Those VI. CONCLUSION
experiments show that the interrupt driven and ZigBee based In this paper, an interrupt-driven, ZigBee-based sensor board
activity sensor board is a low power consumption system, which is designed to realize low power human activity data acquisition
is suitable for activity perception and fall detection in elderly and transmission. Meanwhile, inspired by the idea of 3-channel
communities. RGB image coding, and the 3-axial acceleration and angular
velocity data are mapped into RGB bitmap, and a fall detection
C. Discussion
CNN is designed to distinguish falls from ADLs. Even though,
Even though the inertial sensor has been widely used in most the existing technologies for fall detection based on inertial
wearable devices, it has non-negligible measurement noise. sensor use traditional machine learning. The experimental results
El-Sheimy et al. [24] used Allan variance to model and analyze prove that the average accuracy of our proposed technology is
inertial sensors. The results show that the quantization noise is 98.61%, while its average sensitivity and specificity are 98.62%

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/JSEN.2019.2903482, IEEE
Sensors Journal
and 99.80% respectively. It takes advantages of high accuracy
for fall detection, low-power consumption, long communication
distance of ZigBee, and so on. Hence, it is very suitable for the
fall detection in the elderly community. In the future, the NB-iot
and edge computing technologies will be studied to design and
construct a sensor board based on low-power logistic network
technology.
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Jian He received the M.S. degree in Computer Software
from Northwest University, Xi’an, China in 2000, and
received the Ph.D. degree in Computer Software from
Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China 2005. He is an
associate professor at the School of Software
Engineering, Beijing University of Technology. His
research interests include Ubiquitous Computing,
Embedded System, and HCI.
Zhihao Zhang He received the B.S. degree in Computer
College from Shijiazhuang University in 2016. He is a
graduate student at the School of Software Engineering,
Beijing University of Technology. His research interests
include Ubiquitous Computing, Wearable Technology.
Xiaoyi Wang received his B.S. and Ph.D. degree in
computer science and technology from Tsinghua
University, Beijing, China, in 2004 and 2010
respectively. He is a lecturer with Beijing University of
Technology, China. His research interests include the
data mining of IoT systems.
Shengqi Yang received the Double B.S. degree in
mechanical engineering and economics and the M.S.
degree in electrical engineering from Peking University,
Beijing, China, in 2000 and 2002, respectively, and the
Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Princeton
University, Princeton, NJ, USA, in 2006. He is an
adjunct professor in Beijing Advanced Innovation
Center for Future Internet Technology, Beijing University of
Technology, China. His research interests include IoT, embedded
system design, and big data in digital health.