SportsMBAN: Sports and tele-healthcare wireless medical body area network for real-time activity monitoring and fall detection

Abstract

Recent advances in wireless communication technologies, such as wearable sensors enabled the design and implementation of body area networks (BANs). These networks have several applications that include, but not limited to, in home or office healthcare, sports, entertainment, etc. One of these applications is the recently approved medical BAN (MBAN) by Federal Communication Commission (FCC). Typically, sportsbased MBANs are believed to help athletes as well as normal people to optimize their walking, running and cycling experiences to maximize comfort levels. The aim of SportsMBAN project is to implement an MBAN prototype associated with real-time physiological signal measurement and fall detection of athletes as well as normal subjects via means of body worn sensors. In the proposed SportsMBAN, the captured data via sensors is sent in real-time to off-body central processing units, a PC and smart-phone, and is post-processed using specially designed software. The PC data-processing is based on BioMOBIUS software, whereas data processing on smart-phone is based on Android platform. Finally, the proposed SportsMBAN includes a fall detection stage based on the signal magnitude vector (SMV) approach. The proposed SportsMBAN prototype is implemented and experimental results are provided. Ultimately, the proposed SportsMBAN is suitable for taking accurate measurements at home and outdoors, and for long-term health monitoring and performance enhancement.