DEVELOPMENT OF A GENERIC AND FLEXIBLE HUMAN BODY WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORK

Evdokimos I. Konstantinidisa, Panagiotis D. Bamidisa, Dimitrios Koufogiannisa

a

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, School of Medicine, Laboratory of Medical Informatics, P.O. Box 323 54124, Thessaloniki, Greece evdokimosk@gmail.com

Abstract: Wireless sensor networks on human

body have become essential in the field of patient monitoring. The fact that completely non-invasive sensors can be used attached on clothes, facilitates measurements in daily tasks. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the approach we followed upon developing a generic and flexible patient telemonitoring system based on custom sensor devices and a communication control unit (CCU). A sensor device consists of the measurement control part (microcontroller) and the sensing part (be it commercial or homemade sensors). The CCU plays the role of the master device of the wearable network and is based on a microcontroller and a Bluetooth module. The CCU scans all possible attached sensors on the bus of the network and constructs XML files based on the sensor devices and the network structure. In addition a software suite has also been developed in order to i) manage the different protocols and projects, ii) manage the operating system service and iii) provide different representations/visualizations of the signals (online or offline) in 2D graphs, FFT or 3D human model in the appropriate environment. At the PC side, the operating system service utilizes the XML descriptions in order to acquire the measurement from the CCU and store them in a database. The usefulness of the system is demonstrated through a set of conducted experiments, while the importance of the approach is discussed in the light of recent published literature. I. Introduction The last decade has witnessed a rapid surge of interest in new sensing and monitoring devices for healthcare and the use of wearable/wireless devices and sensor networks for clinical applications. Technological achievements led to small, low power, intelligent and low cost sensors[1]. Besides that, MEMS (Microelectromechanical systems), a relatively new technology of sensors, plays an important role in recent sensing and monitoring devices. MEMS are small integrated devices or systems that combine electrical and mechanical components. MEMS scale and benefits made them very popular in modern designs [2].

Based on these investments, the research and development of sensor networks has flourished recent years. One of the most promising applications of sensor networks is for human health monitoring. Body Sensor Network (BSN) is considered as a vital system for home patient monitoring. A number of small sensors, strategically placed on the human body, create a body area network that can provide a lot of information not only for patients monitoring but also for human daily activities. The main goal for such type of body networks is to monitoring patients under natural physiological conditions for the detection and prevention of transient but possibly life threatening abnormalities [3]. The very small size of the sensing systems, the non-invasive methods, and the wireless and wearable functionality makes this goal reachable. The Body Sensor Networks can produce raw data from the measurements or factors that depend on these measurements. In case of raw data production, a storage system must accompany the whole system (Laptop, PC). In the other case a mobile phone or a storage media (cards) can satisfy the data manipulation. However, factors depend on raw data analysis and repeatable experiments. The analysis of the acquired data of each sensors measurements and the analysis of the integration of all the measurements can reveal important conclusions about health, body movements, physiological status and daily activities. Despite the technological achievements in sensing and monitoring devices, a big effort must be done so all the requirements of such an assuming system to be fulfilled. Issues related to system integration, sensor size, low-power sensors consumption, wireless links and signal processing have still to be researched. Moreover, issues related to quality of service, security, multi-sensor data fusion, and decision support are active research topics needed for deploying body sensor networks [4]. The aim of this paper is to present the approach we followed upon developing a generic and flexible patient tele-monitoring system based on custom sensor devices and a communication control unit (CCU). We present hardware and software architecture of a working wireless sensor network system for monitoring patient health and daily activities. The system consists of an unknown volume of different type sensor devices, the CCU (network coordinator), the accompanying software and the database. This platform is extendable and can

meet the requirements of medical research in a lot of sections that deal with body status and health. II. Materials and Methods II.1 Main Concept The proposed wireless body area sensor network for health monitoring relies on the hardware part (CCU and sensors network) and the software (PC with the appropriate setup). A lot of different type of sensors can be integrated in the network. This option arises from the ability of the CCU to survey and to identify all the connected sensors. The CCU generates XML files based on the collected information. The XML file describes the whole network structure. Making use of this file, the appropriate software on the PC side is able to acquire measurement data. An operating system service has been developed for the acquisition and data storing procedures. The data storing is based on MySQL engine. Apart from the XML files and service management, the software is also responsible for providing different representations/visualizations of the signals (online or offline) in 2D graphs, FFT or 3D human model. The main concept is presented at Figure 1.

II.3 Communication Control Unit (CCU) Playing the role of the gateway, the CCU is responsible for collecting data from the sensor network and forwarding them to the PC. As the master of the network, during the initialization process, scans all possible connected sensors and identifies the attached ones. The initialization process proceeds with a virtual transmition of acquired data. In this stage the CCU estimates the time needed for a complete cycle of gathering and transmitting data (maximum sampling frequency that can be achieved). The XML file that is generated by the CCU contains information about the available protocols of communication, the number and type of sensors and the registers that participate in the conversion of acquired data to measured data. The format of a child of the XML, which describes the sensors, is: -<signal_1 signal_name="a1x"> <signal_type>accelerometer</signal_type> <zero_offset>512</zero_offset> <number_to_multiply>5</number_to_multiply> <measurement_unit>"mG "</measurement_unit> </signal_1> The conversion relies on the OS service in order not to cumber the CCU. While the CCU receives a command from the PC, it starts gathering data from the sensor network and transmits it through Bluetooth wireless connection. The CCU and the sensors are connected physically through four wires. Two of them comprise the communication bus layer and the other two provide with power every device.

Figure 2 CCU connection diagram

Figure 1 Main concept

II.2 Sensors For experimenting purposes, three different types of sensors have been developed: a) accelerometer [8], b) temperature and c) skin conductance. Every sensor is accompanied by a microcontroller [5]. The microcontroller is responsible for communicating and gathering data from the sensor, knowing what type of sensor is and answering to network questions (arriving from CCU). During firmware programming, special registers in the microcontroller are programmed according to the sensors type and output format. Due to the effort for less power consumption, every sensor consists of as less as possible parts. Figure 3 presents the accelerometer sensor.

Figure 3 CCU homemade device (left). Accelerometer sensor, top and bottom view (right).

II.4 Service and Database Trying to develop a user friendly platform on the PC side, we developed an OS service which is responsible for data acquisition and storing. The services argument is an XML file. This file contains all the description for the hardware as well as information for the database and the patient under monitoring. The service can be

controlled from a wide variety of software. As a transmitted packet from the hardware contains header data, the service can distinguish packets between successive raw data. The database engines that are supported by the service are MySQL and MS Access files. When a project depended on new XML file is started, a new table is constructed in the selected database. The table contains fields according to the attached sensors on the network (information from the XML file). In addition, the table contains fields about date and time of each sample. II.5 Software The software suite that has been developed integrates the control and management of the units that have been described up to this point. If a user needs to begin a new project, a wizard by the software asks for the XML file that describes the hardware, the desirable data storage engine, information about the patient under monitoring and a description of the sensors position on the human body. The software is able to control the OS service and to provide different representations/visualizations of the signals. 2D graphs of selected or all the signals can be displayed (filtered or not) in combination with their FFT transformations. The 3D human model, making use of the position description of the accelerometer sensors, represents the body movements [8]. III. RESULTS III.1 Evaluation Method In order to validate the system that has been developed, an experiment took place. Eight accelerometer sensors and a temperature sensor attached on the body. The eight accelerometers attached on the body limbs (before and after every joint). The temperature sensor position was on the chest (near the right elbow). In order to take under consideration the communication lost packets, we selected a stadium as the experiment environment (big range between PC and human). The sampling frequency that achieved was 98Hz.

b) Walking for 60 meters with a higher tempo c) Relaxing at standing position d) Relaxing at sitting position e) Walking for 10 meters and sprinting for 10 meters III.1 Experiment Results The experiment time duration was ~12 minutes. In this period 50817 packets were sent and only two of them lost.

Figure 5 Communication lost packets (software module)

Figure 6 Right Calf acceleration and body temperature during the experiment.

The normal walking is represented at the first stage. The next stage represents the acceleration during walking with higher tempo (and more heavy footsteps). In the next two stages the human was relaxing in standing and sitting position. The final stages show the sprint situations. The upper visualization (Figure 6) is the temperature. During walking and especially during walking in higher tempo it started growing. The normal fall of the temperature was during relaxing.

Figure 4 Evaluation Method

The human under monitoring exercised in 5 stages: a) Walking for 60 meters.

Figure 7 FFT transform of calf acceleration (512 samples window ~ 5 seconds). The main frequncy reveal to be proportional to the footsteps tempo.

IV. DISCUSSION Wireless sensor networks show great commitment for biomedical monitoring systems. In this paper, a system of wireless sensor network and data storing and analysis structures has been developed to acquire and represent measurements of different types of sensors and especially accelerometers. Inertial movement sensing has a high potential for use in human movement analysis. The low cost of the hardware and non-invasive detection techniques make such systems essential and desirable in home care and other managed healthcare institutions [9]. The applications are not limited to the above mentioned. Other potential applications include manmachine interfacing and feedback in artificial human movement control [6]. V. CONCLUSIONS We present a first attempt towards understanding and realizing a body sensor network and its sensing infrastructure. Several challenges need to be addressed in building such a system. Our prototype demonstrates initial design choices and helps reveal related issues. VI. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

VII. REFERENCES [1] Chris Otto, Aleksandar Milenkovic, Corey Sanders, Emil Jovanov, System Architecture of a Wireless Body Area Sensor Network for Ubiquitous Health Monitoring. [2] Stephen Beeby, Graham Ensell, Micahael Kraft, Neil White, MEMS Mechanical Sensors, Artech House. Boston London, 2004 [3] Benny P.L. Lo, Surapa Thiemjarus, Rachel King and Guang-Zhong Yang, Body Sensor Network A Wireless Sensor Platform for Pervasive Healthcare Monitoring, In proceedings of UbiHealth 2004, Nottingham, England [4] A. Lymberis, L. Gatzoulis, Wearable Health Systems: from smart technologies to real applications, In proceedings of EMBC 2006, New York City, New York, USA [5] Microchip. (2007, 10/2007). dsPIC30F6015 microcontroller: Technical data. [6] I.F. Akyildiz, W. Su, Y. Sankarasubramaniam, E. Cayirci, Wireless sensor networks: a survey [7] H. Kanasugi, R. Shibasaki. Measurement and analysis of human behavior using wearable sensors., In Proceedings of The 25th Asian Conference on Remote Sensing, volume 2, pages 1218--1223, 2004. [8] STMicroelectronics. (2007, 09/2007). LIS3L02AL 3-axis accelerometer: Technical data. [9] J. A. Stankovic, Q. Cao, T. Doan, L. Fang, Z. He, R. Kiran, S. Lin, S. Son, R. Stoleru, A. Wood, Wireless Sensor Networks for In-Home Healthcare: Potential and Challenges, In HCMDSS, June 2005