Название: Wearable Technologies and Wireless Body Sensor Networks for Healthcare
Автор: Fernando Jose Velez, Fardin Derogarian Miyandoab
Издательство: The Institution of Engineering and Technology
Год: 2019
Страниц: 609
Язык: английский
Формат: pdf (true)
Размер: 52.8 MB

Continuous advances in wearables, sensors and smart Wireless Body Area Network technologies have precipitated the development of new applications for on-, in- and body-to-body wearable communications for healthcare and sport monitoring. Progress in this cross-disciplinary field is further influenced by developments in radio communication, protocols, synchronization aspects, energy harvesting and storage solutions, and efficient processing techniques for smart antennas.

This book covers various scenarios and solutions using sensor devices and systems for activity recognition and their applications, including wearable communication, smart sensing, RF propagation, and measurement. The authors illustrate conceptual aspects and applications, and provide a new vision in characterising wearable technologies and the need for interoperability. Energy harvesting within wearable solutions is a key issue addressed here as it helps increase energy efficiency and reliability in wearable antennas and sensor devices.

Wearable technology is commonly understood as the broad group of smart electronic devices or accessories that can be worn on the body or implanted under the skin. Their design often incorporates practical functions and features. The history of wearable technologies comprises a pioneering phase along the past centuries, and a more recent phase, where ubiquitous computing and wearable computers that make technology pervasive by interweaving it into daily life are in the centre of their development.

Sensing electronic devices that capture inertial and electromyographic signals facilitate measuring vital signs, recording and transmission of biometric and performance parameters for athlete monitoring. Together with signal processing methodologies, these devices allow for advanced monitoring of human gait in sport activity or for medical purposes. The capture of electromyographic signals from several muscles may be performed with the use of several electrodes embedded in the clothes and connected to different sensor nodes. For the sake of coordination of data from different origins, resource-efficient synchronization mechanisms must be applied. As flexible antennas and different electronic circuits and microwave devices are embedded onto the garment, the conductive and dielectric properties of textile materials used for their manufacturing need to be characterized in detail. Together with wearable sensors placed around the body and machine-learning techniques, radio signals can be used for human movement identification, e.g. for activity recognition purposes.