2288
4, November 2010
Wireless Sensor Network Based E-Health System –
Implementation and Experimental Results
Hairong Yan, Hongwei Huo, Member, IEEE Youzhi Xu, and Mikael Gidlund, Member, IEEE
Abstract — With the increasing number senior citizens,
E-health is targeted for home use with the special
requirements of being usable in everyday life and low
cost. A wireless sensor network application is proposed
here for 24 hour constant monitoring without disturbing
daily activities of elderly people and their caretakers. In
the system proposed, both fixed and body (mobile)
sensors are used. Since not every elder likes to have a
sensor board attached to him/her, and in many cases,
he/she may not carry the sensor; the home sensor network
independently would have the ability to monitor the
health status and living environment based on the multi-
sensor data analysis and fusion. A mixed positioning
algorithm is proposed to determine where the elderly
person is. The purpose of the positioning is to help the
system to determine the person’s activities and further to
make decisions about his/her health status. The system
could take care of two types of the basic needs of an
elderly person: everyday needs as abnormal events and
emergency alarms to doctors and caretakers through
telephone, SMS and e-mail, and day to day requirements
such as taking of medicine, having lunch, turn off the
microwave oven, and so on. At same time, the system is
sensitive to security and privacy issues.1
Keywords— Wireless sensor networks, Radio active
positioning, Radio passive positioning, e-Health.
I. INTRODUCTION
Future generation wireless networks are expected to
experience huge demand in the case of mobile telemedicine
applications [1]. Mobile telemedicine allows patients to
engage in their daily activities while they are monitored
continuously anytime, anywhere. Typical applications for e-
health are transmissions of electro-cardiogram (ECG) signals
[2] from a mobile patient to a doctor, transmissions of X-rays,
live video etc,
1
This work was supported in part by the EU Regional Funds and the
research council of Norway (NFR).
Hairong Yan was with the Department of Electrical Engineering,
Jönköping, Sweden but she is with the Embedded Software and Systems
Institute, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing, China(e-mail:
hairong_yan@163.com).
Youshi Xu is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Jönköping
University, Jönköping, Sweden (e-mail: youzhi.xu@jth.jh.se).
Hongwei Huo is with the School of Electronics and Information
Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University, China(e-mail:
huohw82@hotmail.com)
Mikael Gidlund was with Nera Networks AS, Norway but he is now with
ABB Corporate Research, SE-721 78 Västerås, Sweden. (e-mail:
mikael.gidlund@se.abb.com).
Contributed Paper
Manuscript received 10/15/10
Current version published 12/23/10
Electronic version published 12/30/10. 0098 3063/10/$20.00 © 2010 IEEE
IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics, Vol. 56, No.
In the last decade, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs)
have received a lot of attention in both academia and industry
since there exist many unsolved research challenges, and since
the WSN devices are small in size and easy to deploy they
offer a myriad of attractive applications for different
industries. One major attractive application for WSN is the
localization of either devices or people in various
environments such as factories, oilrigs and healthcare systems.
Wireless sensor networks in healthcare applications require
small lightweight devices with sensing, computational, and
communication features which need to be unobtrusively
placed on the patient’s body. Despite the increased interest in
the WSN area, there remains a significant gap between
existing wireless sensor network designs and the requirements
of medical monitoring. Most sensors are intended for
deployments of stationary nodes that are transmitting data
with low data rate. Typical applications in healthcare require
relatively high data rates, reliable communication, and
multiple receivers (e.g. PDAs carried by doctors and nurses).
Related Work: A number of different research projects are
exploring medical sensor networks. Most projects are
concerned with developing wearable medical sensors, while
others have developed infrastructures for monitoring
individual patients during daily activity, at home, or in
hospitals. Paper [10] can be considered as a landmark
summary of telemedicine. In this paper, the emerging wireless
and networking technologies and their use to promote the
ultimate goal of global health by means of deployment of a
telemedicine paradigm is discussed. Authors conduct a state-
of-the-art study of recent wireless and medical sensor
technologies in conjunction with investigation of growing
pressures for a better health care service throughout the world
triggered by the growing age population, social
transformations. However, for as much as this, more general
concept other than WSN based Health care system is
discussed in this paper. According to author’s point of view,
sensor networks can be a very important part of the next
generation of wireless computing for building a new
harmonized health care infrastructure.
In [2], Guillen et al. proposed a tele-homecare multimedia
platform for videoconferencing based on standard H.320 and
H.323, and a standard TV set based on integrated services
digital network (ISDN) and Internet protocol (IP) to let the
patients upload their physiological information to a healthcare
center and to provide tele-homecare service such as
consultancy over phone. The above-mentioned healthcare
systems restrict the activity area of patients for example within
a medical healthcare institute. With the integration of wireless
communication devices, patients would have more freedom.
In [4], Lin et al. used a personal digital assistant (PDA) to
H. Yan et al.: Wireless Sensor Network Based E-Health System – Implementation and Experimental Results
monitor and collect the physiological parameters which are
immediately transmitted via wireless local area networks
(WLAN) to be analyzed by medical personnel. In [5], Rasid
and Woodward used Bluetooth as wireless communication
device to communicate with a remote central management
unit.
Recently WSN has started to enter the e-Health business
and there are several ongoing projects. In [8], a project called
CodeBlue proposes a new architecture focusing on tracking
and monitoring of patients. They use MoteTrack location
system that employs many beacon nodes, which broadcast
beacon messages at various transmission powers. In [9], a
prototype system is built where sensor tags are placed on
everyday objects such as a coffee cup or a toothbrush and the
system monitors the movement of the tagged objects through
tag readers. In [12], Talbar et al. proposed a WSN solution
based on IEEE 802.15.4 and using multiple sensing and event
detection modalities to process elderly monitoring in a
distributed fashion.
Additionally, a series of excellent works for general
purpose health care are reported. The concept of a tree based 3
layer distributed sensor network patient monitoring and care is
introduced in [14]. C-C Lin et.al [15] introduce a predominant
work to merge communication technology and Geographic
Information System (GIS) by invoking GPS, GSM, and RFID
to achieve a seamless Dementia elderly persons’ actions
monitoring. A similar architectural framework for health care
and wellness management via wired networks is discussed in
[16], which illustrates a sleep activity pattern monitoring
application. In these systems, only public wireless
communication networks are used to connect the health care
center and the users, which are not fit for transmission data via
next generation networks. AID-N [17] facilitates
communication between health providers at disaster scene,
medical professionals at local hospitals, and specialist
available for consultation from distant facilities. The system is
capable of measuring patient’s vital signs and location via
Mote Track [11] and GPS. In AID-N, a wearable wireless
sensor node is attached to the patient’s wrist. When there is an
emergency issue, the node can form a 2-node ad-hoc wireless
network with the first responder’s portable tablet PC. The vital
signs can be sensed and recorded into an electronic patient
record database in the portable tablet PC and then transmitted
to the medical center via CDMA based EvDO wireless
technology. A secure web portal allows authenticated users to
collaborate and share patient’s database in real-time. We use
similar approach to form a larger ad hoc sensor networks by
joint HSN sensors and BSN sensors to achieve more accurate
measurements. The BSN-based health care system in [18]
allows the connectivity of a wide range of heterogeneous body
sensors to a portable hub device (PDPU) via Zigbee/IEEE
802.15.4 standard technology. The PDPU is connectable to
external networks (IEEE 802.11b or GPRS). This system is
based on the use of off-the-shelf modules and currently being
used at the European level for the detection and the prediction
of the human physiological state in relation to wakefulness,
fatigue, and stress applications in which users carrying out
daily activities are monitored in an unobtrusive and
2289
comfortable way. However, it only works as the data collector;
no more decision schemes are introduced. In [13], the authors
investigated how video surveillance can be used in the home
telemedicine approach. However both the elderly and the
patients strongly rejected the use of any camera or video, in
sensor network designs, which is certified in [13]. In our
approach, we just use non-vision sensors to achieve
monitoring to avoid such rejections.
Three intermediate reports were published in [20] and [21].
Recently we have also developed an interconnection platform
and a service management platform to support large scale data
interconnections and real-time health state reports to related
persons (e.g. doctors or nurses, elder-self, elders’ relatives),
via all popular communication approaches, such as automatic
voice telephone call, SMS or Email etc [22]. However, in this
paper, we will pay more attention to the detailed
implementation approach and experiments other than general
functionalities introduction.
Main Contributions: The main contributions in this paper
can be summarized as follows:
x A full scale wireless sensor network based e-health
system is implemented and evaluated.
x Track people regardless of whether they are wearing
a sensor board or not. A mixed localization algorithm
based on received sensor data and received signal
strength indicator (RSSI) is proposed.
x The effect of the movement of the person on the
radio propagation is measured, which is proof to
passive localization being possible.
Organization of the paper: The remainder of the paper is
organized as follows. Section II describes system architecture
and sensor deployment. Section IV describes the embedded
software design and in Section V we discuss the mixed
positioning algorithm and implementation. Section VI discuss
the experimental set up and results analysis and finally in
Section VII conclude our work.
II. SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE AND SENSOR DEPLOYMENT
The product will be used in old person’s home including
networks integration devices, which implementation is divided
into two stages. The first stage is where the wireless sensor
network in the person’s home collects the environmental and
personal parameters; this implementation is discussed in the
current paper. The second stage is where the Internet transfers
data collected to remote computer or PDA. That will be
introduced in another paper.
Base station (BS) with computer is the access point between
the wireless sensor network and the Internet. Through it, the
wireless sensor network data is transformed and is accessible
through Internet, and conversely the Internet instructions are
transformed to wireless sensor network commands.
Figure 1 shows the typical hardware configuration in the
architecture of our wireless sensor network system. In the
right bottom dashed rectangle, multi-sensor board with
wireless sensor node collect and transmit environmental data
including temperature, light, sound, microphone,
2290 IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics, Vol. 56, No. 4, November 2010

accelerometer, and magnetometer to the system. The wireless receives data on moving. The node is also fitted with an
sensor node here also can function as a router if other nodes emergency button that the person can press in the emergency.
need to forward data. Upper-right hand picture in figure 2 is how the whole system
%DVH QRGH
looks in our lab.
, QW HU I DFH
ERDU G
PRW H
III. EMBEDDED SOFTWARE DESIGN
VHQVRU
:L U HO HVV
VHQVRU  QRGH
As the consistency of the message format guarantees
successful communication among the nodes and the computer,
9RO W DJH PDW FKHG
FL U FXL W
'DW D DFTXL U HG
ERDU G
we first introduce the message data structure followed by
:L U HO HVV system functions.
VHQVRU  QRGH

:L U HO HVV A. Data Structure

VHQVRU  QRGH 0XO W L  VHQVRU 
ERDU G
Two types of messages are transmitted in the system. One is
PRW H for RSSI positioning algorithm (mobile frame message), the
other is for sending all kinds of sensor data (surge message).
Figure 1. Typically hardware configuration in our wireless sensor In our experimental system, only the mobile nodes send the
network.
mobile frame message. It is used to position the mobile person.
The mobile frame format is given in Table 1.
In the left dashed rectangle, data acquired board attached to
wireless sensor node can be connected to different types of TABLE 1. FIELDS OF MOBILE FRAME FORMAT
sensors, the data acquired board accepts either analog or Byte # Description
digital signals, and embedded within it has provides moisture Field
and temperature sensor. The board is also used to support 0-1 CountId Mobileframe id
pressure, heartbeat, fire alarm and emergency button’s data 2-3 hsourceaddr Moving node address
collection.

CountId is used to avoid the base station receive same

Figure 2. Lab setup with sensor nodes and wireless sensor network
system.
Figure 2 shows the photo of our different sensor nodes and the
wireless sensor network system in the lab.
Pressure sensor node (bottom-left in figure2) connected to air
mattress with vacuum pipe. Once the pressure of air mattress
changes, this indicates that there is a person on the bed or
chair, resulting in the action of sitting or sleeping to be
recognized.
Fire sensor node (bottom-right in figure2) is placed in the
kitchen. The sensor can detect the fire and transmit the alarm
to the base station while sounding the alarm at same time.
Pulse sensor node (top-left in figure2) is used to measure the
human heartbeat. Too low heartbeat rate or too high can imply
a health risk. Attaching the sensor node to the wrist of the
person will not limit the mobilization, as would the wired
machine in the hospital. Of course, the node would send and
mobile frame many times. Since the network uses multi-hop
routing, mobile frame is broadcast by the mobile sensor node
periodically; only the one-hop recipient neighbors calculate its
receive signal strength, enclose the RSSI message in their data
packet and forward it to the base station by a self-routing and
distributed retransmission. Base station may receive the same
packet more than once.
Hsourceaddr identifies the person. As described, our
experimental system is aimed at elderly persons living alone,
then there is only one moving node, and Hsourceaddr
always set same value.
Surge message definition is described in Table 2, where Bytes
0 to 8 contain the normal information of a packet, that include
the type of the message, read able or not, is forwarding
message or not (i.e. not generated by the node itself), order of
the packets and the battery situation.
Bytes 9 to 16 are used for reading different sensor data. If
there is no such sensor, the corresponding fields are empty.
Bytes 17 to 20 capture the mobile frame information, when
the node is with one-hop of the mobile node. Once the node
receives mobile frame by one-hop, it will read the RSSI pin to
get the signal strength of the mobile frame, and fill this value
in the signal strength field of the first packet in the sending
pool, with CountId being obtained from short frame
message. If there is no mobile frame message received, signal
strength field will be empty.
When node sends a surge message, a message header will be
added, that will indicate the source node address. So when the
base station receives the surge message, it will point which
node the mobile frame signal strength belongs to. This returns
a clue indicating which node the person is in proximity of.
H. Yan et al.: Wireless Sensor Network Based E-Health System – Implementation and Experimental Results 2291

TABLE 2. FIELDS OF SURGE MESSAGE FORMAT

Byte # Field Description

0 Type The type of message that indicates the
action
1-2 Reading Does not appear to be used
3-4 Parent Address The address of the Parent Node
5-8 Sequence The upper 9 bits represent the battery
Number voltage. The remaining bits count the
number of packets sent since the
application was last reset
9 Light The raw light sensor reading
10 Temp The raw thermostat reading
11 Pres L The raw sensor reading for the pressure
sensor, low bits
12 Pres H The raw sensor reading for the pressure
sensor, high bits
13 Heart L The raw sensor reading for the
heartbeat sensor, low bits
14 Heart H The raw sensor reading for the
heartbeat sensor, high bits
15 MicHigh The raw sensor reading for microphone Figure 3. Interface for showing the nodes’ position in apartment during
high the application running
16 MicLow The raw sensor reading for microphone
low
17-20 Signal strength 2 byte for CountID IV. POSITIONING ALGORITHM AND IMPLEMENTATION
2 byte for signal strength
One of the most attractive applications of WSN is estimate the
location and tracking of movement of targets. Generally there
exist three main techniques: 1) Time of Arrival (TOA); 2)
B. Data storage Angle of Arrival (AOA); and 3) Received Signal Strength
Three Microsoft Access tables are built for saving the Indicator (RSSI). In our healthcare system, we are more
parameters of person and the surrounding environment. Table concerned about the conditions, where about and the current
actiondecision (Current Time, Position, and Action) action of the elderly person being monitored. A mixed
records the person’s movement, which includes where the positioning algorithm is the used in our software design to
person is, what the person is doing and the time. Table satisfy various scenarios.
table_sensordata (Current time, send_id, RSSI, In our system, first we depend on object proximity
Photo_data, Temp_data, humidty_data, voice_data, positioning, which analyzes the data received from the sensor
pressure_data, etc.) records the data that sensor collected. nodes that the position known (object proximity). For
Table trainsigstr (room, RSSI1, RSSI2, etc.) records the example, if the light sensor in refrigerator is trigged that
signal strengths for the particular room that the person is means that the person has opened the refrigerator. Certainly, it
located in. can easily be deduced the person is in the kitchen. This way it
To decrease the time used for saving, 1000 records are saved can be exactly deduced where the person is without any
in one batch. sensors attached to the body.
However if the person does not interact with the furniture or
with sensors in the room, we will lose track of him/her.
C. Visualization Therefore, as a second solution, we have to attach a sensor
Different visualization interface can be chosen by the button node on the person, using an active signaling positioning by
on the left window of the interface. By default, topology of simple RSSI comparison. This works with lower accuracy rate
the networks, node position in the apartment, person activities due to signal’s complex propagation characteristics when a
chart and alarms are showed in the interface. person is moving.
In figure 3, all the nodes positioned in a residence are shown. Occasionally, when the person forgets to put the sensor nodes
Notebook computer is the base station, and black dots on, a signaling passive positioning algorithm is used to judge
represent the nodes. Node 10 (the person) is shown as a cross his motion as a third solution. The third solution has a lower
in balcony near node 20. accuracy rate than the second, and only gives a hint if the
The software also would sound an alarm in case of no person is moving or not. Another experiment is still in
heartbeat, when the emergency button is pressed or the fire progress to define the model where the person is by using the
alarm is triggered. interference caused to the signal by the motion of the person.
Therefore, three positioning methods incorporated in our
system;
2292 IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics, Vol. 56, No. 4, November 2010

A. Object proximity positioning RSSI values and m is the position sums of all non zero signals
In object proximity positioning, the positioning depends in the vector. t, m are used to improve the differentiation
on the position of the object to which the sensor is attached, ability of the algorithm.
by a simple data analysis and a decision is made based on the There are two stages for this algorithm. One is learning
data collected from the sensor. stage, the other being the decision stage. In the learning stage,
As was introduced in the hardware section, several sensors all the vectors are saved to form a matrix. After learning stage,
are used in our system. First decision is made by analyzing the the saved vector matrix should look like (1),
value of the special position of the known sensor. Pressure p1 h11 h21 ... h1N  2
sensor attached on the cushion on the chair in sitting room. p2 h21 h22 ... h2 N  2 (1)
When its value exceeds a pre-determined value means that the
... ... ... ... ...
person is sitting on the chair, hence the location of the person
can be deduced; when the value of the light sensor in the pK hK 1 hK 2 ... hKN  2
refrigerator in the kitchen changes, the person has opened the
refrigerator, then the software makes a decision that the where hij  ^RSSI ij , t , m`, pk is obtained from the interface of the
person has opened the refrigerator in the kitchen. Microphone
program. At the decision stage, the vector matrix is read from
on the sensor board with sensors fitted to the water pipe in
the database and pk is obtained from the positioning algorithm.
kitchen too, it is used to indicate if the tap opened; moisture
The decision procedure is given below:
sensor on the mote in bathroom also predict if the person in
the shower.
1. Collect new RSSI samples in the BS. The new incoming
Before explaining the analysis process, by definition, any
vector is described as RSSI1 , RSSI 2 , ! , RSSI n .
data received by the sensor is a random process.
Definition: 2. For the next sample, the vector is updated to contain the
Given a random process X i X 0 , X 1 , X 2 , ! , X N 1 . The following variables RSSI1 , RSSI 2 , ! , RSSI n , t , m , which
for simplicity can be described
§ n 1 ·
¨
¨¦
©i 0
Xi ¸
¸
¹
as RSSI1 , RSSI 2 , !, RSSI n , RSSI n 1 , RSSI n  2 .
mean of the random process is m and 3. Compare the incoming vector with stored matrix for
n learning stage.
V i2 m  X i 2. ­N  2 ½
It easy to see that when V 2 ! test , the person is acting on
4. Calculate the distance ' k ® ¦ RSSI i  hki ¾ .
¯i 1 ¿
the sensor. The test value is obtained from the sensor data just
before the decision is made.
­N  2 ½
B. Active signaling positioning 5. Search for min ®
¯
¦ RSSI
i 1
i  hki ¾ in the saved vector
¿
In active signaling positioning, one sensor node attached
on the person actively transmits radio signals periodically, so matrix. pk in the matched vector is the result .
the approximate position of the person is determined by
comparing the radio signals received by different nodes. Example:
Suppose there are N fixed nodes and M target nodes, In learning stage, consider that learning stage matrix consist of
communication along all the fixed nodes and the target nodes following received raw data (bathroom, 23, 44, 6,
is based on IEEE std 802.15.4. The received RSSI vector Rj 0, 0, 2, 0, 0). There are four non-zero numbers in the
from the base station can be described by the following vector, t count if RSSI ! 0 4 , and

Rj >r1, r2 ,", rN @
m ¦ position RSSI
if RSSI i !0
i 1  2  3  6 12 .

The room name is chosen by the user and the vector

where N is the total number of nodes within the network. Each changes to (bathroom,23,44,7,0,0,3,0,0,4,12).
fixed node measures the RSSI for the target node j (j=1... M) Suppose we get the saved matrix as (2) following:
and sends the information to a sink node. The signal strength livingroom 0 23 34 0 0 0 0 024
between target node j and its neighbor in a particular room is (2)
livingroom 0 25 36 0 0 0 0 024
given by Rj . For simplicity, we consider case of just one bathroom 23 44 6 0 0 2 0 0 4 12
target node (just one person in the room), which means we kitchen 23 0 0 0 20 60 0 52 4 20
will use R instead of Rj. ri is defined as the RSSI value
between the fix node i , i  (1, N ) and target node. In decision stage, if current incoming vector we collect is
In next step, we add the columns pk, t and m into the ( 23,44,7,0,0,3,0,0,4,12) , the minimal distance is: ' 2 , the third
3
received vector R and hence we get R= [pk, r1, r2,…,rN,t,m]. pk vector will be matched in the saved matrix, and a decision
is the label of the room k(bathroom, living room etc.), will be made that the person is in the bathroom.
k  (1, K ) , t defines a counter of the number of non-zero
H. Yan et al.: Wireless Sensor Network Based E-Health System – Implementation and Experimental Results 2293

V. DEMONSTRATOR SET-UP AND EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS 180

photo_data
160
A. Demonstrator Set-Up 140

In our experimental application, 12 nodes are distributed in 120

a home with kitchen, bedroom, balcony, corridor, bathroom 100

and living room. The deployments of sensor nodes are as 80
follows: 60
Outside staircase: Node 16 with sensors of light, 40
temperature, and microphone;
20
Corridor: Node 3 with sensors of light, temperature, and
0
microphone;

11:5:47
11:7:23
11:9:31
11:12:51
11:14:35
11:16:11
11:17:55
11:19:31
11:21:15
11:22:58
11:25:14
11:26:50
11:28:42
11:30:34
11:32:18
11:33:54
11:35:38
11:37:14
11:38:57
11:40:33
11:42:17
11:43:53
11:45:37
11:47:13
Kitchen: A Node 8 with light, temperature, microphone
puts near coffee maker; Node 4 with light, temperature, Figure 4. Node 1 in bath room light data variety
microphone sensors puts in the refrigerator;
Living room: Node 2 with light, temperature, and
540
microphone sensors puts somewhere in the room; Base voice_data

station positioned in living room with identifier 0; 520

Bed room: Node 13 with light, temperature, microphone; 500

Node 11 with temperature, relative humidity and air

480
pressure sensor connected to the air mattress on the bed by
vacuum pipe; 460

Bathroom: Node 1 with light, temperature, microphone put 440

on the sewer pipe; Node 17 with light and relative humidity

420
put near shower;
Balcony: Node 20 with light, temperature, and microphone; 400
11:5:47
11:6:35
11:7:31
11:8:27
11:9:39
11:10:27
11:13:7
11:13:55
11:14:51
11:15:39
11:16:35
11:17:23
11:18:19
11:19:7
11:20:3
11:20:51
11:21:46
11:22:42
11:24:2
11:24:58
11:25:54
11:26:42
11:27:38
Body (mobile sensor): Node 10 with temperature, relative
humidity, body pulse counter and an emergency button
attached to the wrist of the person. Figure 5. Node 1 in bath room before bath voice data variety
After all the nodes have been arranged as in the
deployment, the person first walks according to the training 100
humidity_data

route (about 30 minutes), which requires stay in every room 90

for some time for the computer to learn the position, then 80

walk along training simulation routing: enter through the 70

60
main door, go bath room, watch TV in living room, cook in
50
kitchen, sleep on bed, take shower, go to the balcony, and
40
walk out of the main door. The entire experiment takes 1.5
30
hours.
20

10

B. Experimental Results 0
11:5:51
11:7:27
11:9:19
11:11:28
11:13:2
11:14:52
11:16:27
11:18:17
11:19:52
11:21:41
11:23:51
11:25:23
11:26:56
11:30:39
11:32:4
11:33:26
11:34:40
11:36:13
11:37:55
11:39:42
11:41:28
11:43:20
11:45:10
11:46:44
1) Object proximity positioning
We have collected and saved all the data. As an example, here
Figure 6. Node 17 in bathroom humidity data variety
we take the sensor data in bath room.
Node 1 and node 17 put in bathroom Microphone data Because of the surrounding background noise, the weight of
obtained from. Node 1 fitted on the pipe is used to judge the sensor data form the tap in the bathroom is very low. To make
action of opening the tap. Node 17 is put near the shower to a more accurate decision, multi-condition positioning would
judge if the person is having a shower. be used here. Combined with the data from the humidity
In figure 4 2 , there are three regions where the values are sensor and temperature sensor in bathroom, we can make a
higher than the average value for light data, which means that more accurate conclusion. As the figure 6 shows, there is one
the light in bath room is turned on three times. big change in the humidity. Combination of data from the
In our scenario, the tap has been turned on two times before temperature and sound sensor on tap, shows that the person in
taking a shower. From figure 5, we can see there are two the bathroom. As figure 6 shows, using the humidity data to
obvious splices. One happened at about 11:9, another judge the person is taking a shower is accompanied by a time
happened at 11:24. According to figure 5, we can determine delay in a similar fashion to the temperature sensor. Especially
the time that the person had opened the tap. the end time cannot be determined by analyzing the data. If
the door of the bathroom is closed, the humidity drops very
slowly. In this test, we open the door of bathroom, so
2
humidity drops faster.
the units of y-axis in Figure 4-7 is voltage
2294 IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics, Vol. 56, No. 4, November 2010

8
computer
real
7

0
11:3:24

11:6:6

11:6:55

11:7:40

11:8:22

11:9:1

11:9:43

11:10:20

11:11:16

11:12:12

11:13:5

11:13:53

11:14:32

11:15:7

11:15:46

11:16:25

11:17:7

11:17:52

11:18:33

11:19:5

11:19:40

11:20:49

11:21:49

11:22:29

11:23:2

11:23:36

11:24:13

11:24:56

11:25:54

11:26:42

11:27:26

11:28:6

11:28:41

11:29:22

11:30:16

11:30:48

11:31:26

11:31:58

11:32:31

11:33:8

11:33:43

11:34:20

11:34:56

11:35:34

11:36:18

11:38:2

11:39:42

11:41:47

11:43:25

11:44:14

11:44:57
Figure 7. Position decision in our system

2) Signaling active positioning positioning method that does not interfere with the normal
As figure 7 shows, the dashed line (red) shows the real life of the person at any stage in addition to a lower cost
position of the person; the solid line shows the position advantage.
determined by the signaling active positioning gave. The
labels of 1 to 8 of the y-axis are the ids of the rooms in the
department: which corridor, living room, kitchen, bathroom, Acknowledgement:
I would like to acknowledge Mr. Kourosh in Beijing
balcony, bedroom, outdoor, and the place far away from the
University of Technology for improving the language in
building respectively. If the person keeps motionless like
article.
sitting in sofa, the correct rate is 70%, while motion, this rate
drops to 30%. The average accuracy rate is current 53.26%.
REFERENCES
IX. CONCLUSION [1] R. G. Lee, H.-S. Chen, C.-C. Lin, K. –C. G and J.-H. Chen, “Home
This paper describes the detail implementation of E-healthcare telecare system using cable television plants – an experimental field trial,
IEEE Trans. Inf Technol. Biomed, vol 4, no. 1, pp. 37-44, March 2000.
by a wireless sensor network. The idea of E-healthcare is to
[2] A. I. Heernandez, F. Mora, G. Vollegas, G. Passariello, and G. Carrault,
help the elderly who live alone. The system will provide home “Real-time ECG transmission via Internet for nonclinical applications,”
assistant, nurse, healthcare center and relatives with a degree IEEE. Trans. Inf. Technol. Biomed., vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 253-257, Sept.
of “understanding” of what is happening around the person 2001.
without interrupting normal daily life. [3] S. Guillen, M. T. Arredondo, V. Traver, J. M. Garcia, and C. Fernandez,
“Multimedia telehomecare system using standard TV set,” IEEE Trans.
We describe the system, hardware and software design. Inf. Technol. Biomed., vol. 49, no. 12, pp. 1431-1437, Dec. 2002.
Data structure, data storage and visualization of the [4] Y.-H. Lin, I.-C Jan, P. C.-I. Ko, Y.-Y. Chen, J.-M. Wong, and G.-J. Jan,
application are also discussed. Node embedded program and “A wireless PDA-based physiological monitoring system for patient
PC program are incorporated in implementing the data transport,” IEEE Trans. Inf. Technol. Biomed., vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 439-447,
Dec. 2004.
collection. Raw data is saved to the local database or [5] M.F.A Rasid, and B. Woodward, “Bluetooth telemedicine processor for
transmitted to the Internet for further analysis. A mixed multichannel biomedical monitoring via mobile cellular networks,”
positioning algorithm is used, object proximity positioning, IEEE Trans. Inf. Technol. Biomed., vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 35-43, March 2005.
signaling active positioning, signaling passive positioning [6] N. Bulusu and J. Jha, “Wireless Sensor Networks,” Artech House, 2005.
[7] A. Wood, G. Virone, T. Doan, Q. Cao, L. Selavo, Y. Wu, L. Fang, Z.
work together. Simple data analysis for object proximity He, S. Lin, and J. Stankovic. ALARM-NET: Wireless sensor networks
positioning and multi-condition positioning are made for assisted-living and residential monitoring. Technical Report CS-
depending on the fixed position sensor data. If due to lack of 2006-11, Department of Computer Science, University of Virginia, 2006
sensor data, the position cannot be correctly determined, [8] U. Anliker, J. A. Ward, P. Lukowicz, G. Tröster, F. Dolveck, M. Baer, F.
Keita, E. Schenker, F. Catarasi, and R. Schmid, “AMON: A Wearable
signaling active positioning algorithm is used. While there is multiparameter medical monitoring and alerst system,” IEEE Trans. on
no signal from the elderly person, signaling passive Inf. Technol., Biomed., vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 415-427, 2004.
positioning will work. [9] C. Otto, A. Milenkovic, C. Sanders, and E. Jovanov, “System
An experiment scenario and deployments of sensor are architecture of a wireless body area sensor network for ubiquitous health
monitoring,” Journal of Mobile Multimedia, vol. 1, no. 4, pp. 307-326,
given, and different results by object proximity positioning, 2006
signaling active positioning, and signaling passive positioning [10] .H. F. Rashvand, V. T. Salcedo, E. M. Sanchez, and D. Iliescu,
is analyzed. “Ubiquitous wireless telemedicine,” IET Communications, vol. 2, no. 2,
In our experiment, we also test without any signals from pp. 237-254, Feb. 2008.
[11] K. Lorincz, and M. Welsch, “MoteTrack: A robust, decentralized
the target, by the simply relying on the passive radio signals, approach to RF-based location tracking,” Personal and Ubiquitous
a passive signaling positioning can also work. We think it Computing, Special issue on location and context awareness, Springer-
can play a more important role in E-health as it is a Verlag, Oct. 2006.
H. Yan et al.: Wireless Sensor Network Based E-Health System – Implementation and Experimental Results
[12] A. M. Tabar, A. Keshavarz, and H. Aghajan,”Smart home care network
using sensor fusion and distributed vision-based reasoning,” in Proc. 4th
ACM International Workshop on Video Surveillance and Sensor
Networks, Oct. 2006.
[13] R. Steele, C. Secombe, and W. Brookes, “Using wireless sensor
networks for aged care: The patients perspective,” in Proc. Pervasive
Health Conference and Workshops, Dec. 2006.
[14] P.Bauer, M.Sichitiu, R.Istepanian, and K.Premaratne, “The mobile
patient: wireless distributed sensor networks for patient monitoring and
care”, in Proceedings of the 2000 IEEE EMBS International Conference
on Information Technology Applications in Biomedicine, November,
2000. pp. 17-21.
[15] C.-C Lin, M.-J Chiu,. C.-C Hsiao, R.-G Lee and Y.-S Tsai, “Wireless
Health Care Service System for Elderly With Dementia”, IEEE
Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine, Volume
10, Issue 4, October 2006, pp.696-704.
[16] Jit Biswas, Maniyeri Jayachandran, Louis Shue, Wendong Xiao and
Philip Yap, “An Extensible System for Sleep Activity Pattern
Monitoring”, in proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on
Intelligent Sensors Sensor Networks and Information, (ISSNIP 07),
December 2007, pp. 561-565.
[17] Tia. Gao, Dan. Greenspan, Matt. Welsh, Radford R.Juang and Alex
Alm, “Vital sign monitoring and patient tracking over a wireless
network”, in Proceedings of the 27th IEEE Annual Conference
Engineering in Medicine and Biology, (EMBS 2005) , January 2006,
pp.102-105.
[18] E. Monton, J.F. Hernandez, J.M. Blasco, T. Herve, J. Micallef, I. Grech,
A. Brincat and V. Traver, “Body area network for wireless patient
monitoring”, IET Communications, Volume 2, Issue 2, February 2008.
pp.215-222.
[19] H. Yan, Y. Xu, M. Gidlund and R.Nohre, “An experimental study on
home-wireless passive positioning”, in Proceedings of the Second
International Conference on Sensor Technologies and Applications
(SensorComm 2008), Aug. 2008, pp 223-228.
[20] H. Yan, Y. Xu and M. Gidlund, “Experimental e-Health Applications in
Wireless Sensor Networks”, in Proceedings of the 2009 International
Conference on Communications and Mobile Computing (CMC2009),
Jan.2009, pp. 563-567.
[21] H. Huo, Y. Xu, H. Yan, Saad Mubeen and H. Zhang, "An Elderly Health
Care System Using Wireless Sensor Networks at Home," in Proceedings
of the 2009 3rd International Conference on Sensor Technologies and
Applications (SensorComm 2009), 2009. pp.158-163.
BIOGRAPHIES
H. Yan received her Ph.D degree in electrical and
information school of Xi’an Jiaotong University, China,
2006. She is currently the associate professor of
Embedded Software and System Institute, Beijing
University of Technology, China. She has researched in
wireless sensor networks of E-health in Jonkoping
University, Sweden, 2007, and has been a visitor scholar
to do the research in power control of mobile communication in Tsukuba
University, Japan, 2003. Her research interests are wireless communication,
wireless sensor networks and embedded system programming.
2295
H. Huo obtained his B.S. degree in Communication and
Information Engineering from the School of Electronics
and Information Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong
University, China in 2004. Subsequently, he finished M.S.
in Communication and Information System from the
same institute in 2006 and started his Ph.D projects there
in 2006. In March 2008, he joined the Data
Communication at the Department of Computer Science, School of
Engineering, Jönköping University, Sweden, where he is currently a joint-
training Ph.D student in data communication. His current research interest is
routing and service discovery in Wireless sensor networks. He is a member of
IEEE.
Y. Xu graduated from Jaotong University, Xian, China in
1968, received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering
from Linköping University, Sweden in 1991. During
1969–1985 he worked at Changfeng Electronics
Research Institute, Lanzhou, China as a research
engineer. During 1985–1991 he worked as a guest
researcher at Linköping University, Sweden. In 1991, he
was employed as a research engineer at Laser Spectrum, Delsbo. Between
1993 -2003 head of telecommunication division at Mid-Sweden University,
Sundsvall. Now he is a full professor in Data Communication at Jönköping
University, Jönköping, Sweden. Dr. Y.Xu is now interested in error-correcting
codes, multiple access, communication networks and multimedia technology.
M. Gidlund (M’99) received his MSc in electrical
engineering from Mid Sweden University, Sundsvall,
Sweden in 1999 and his Lic. Tech degree in radio
communication systems from Royal Institute of
Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden in 2004 and his
Ph.D degree in electrical engineering from Mid Sweden
University, Sundsvall, Sweden in 2005. He is currently
working as head of wireless communication at ABB
Corporate Research, Sweden. Between August 2007 and September 2008 he
was working as a research scientist at Nera Networks AS, Norway. Between
February 2006 and August 2007 he was working as research engineer and
project manager at Acreo AB, Sweden. During Feb-July 2005 he was a
visiting research at the Dept. of Informatics, University of Bergen, Norway.
His current research interests are in communication theory, signal processing
and multimedia transmission for wireless communication. Dr Gidlund has
served as member of technical program committees in several major
conferences (PIMRC, VTC, ICC) and is also participating in the organization
committee for the conference on Software Defined Radio (SDR’09). He is a
member of IEEE.