Wireless Detection System for Health and Military Application

Abstract

This study is to develop a wireless detection system for health and military application. Among the elderly population falling/collapsing is a common and very serious issue. It can cause severe injuries like fractures, joint dislocations, head injuries etc. In cases where person is immobilized or lost consciousness it is not possible to seek immediate help or medical attention. There are several cases where elderly people live alone are not found for hours after the fall which makes the situation more severe. The damage caused because of failure in seeking medical attention at the right time is more than the damage and injuries caused by the fall itself. Similar cases can be found with Border Security Force soldiers and other security people standing for long hours guarding the nation borders. Also VIP securities standing in front of VIP homes are vulnerable for such attacks causing injuries. Objective of this paper is to develop a wireless fall-detection system which can sense such situations and alerts others seeking help. The sensors for fall Detection is wearable by the potential-victim/user. Upon detection of fall/collapse the sensor system transmits the information wirelessly, which will be received by the care-taker's mobile. The sensor is a belt shaped wearable device consisting of accelerometer (tri-axial) and gyroscope. These sensors are used to classify the posture and dynamics of the user. The main aim of the project is to develop efficient algorithms to detect falls and distinguish between falls and non-falls using these sensors. The sensor is a part of zigbee node. It will communicate to the microcontroller over zigbee. Zigbee will provide an efficient wireless communication with the microcontroller with relatively small hardware size. The microcontroller is responsible for sending information to the Care taker's mobile using a GSM module interfaced to it. The microcontroller is interfaced to a PC in order to burn the program on to the microcontroller and for testing and debugging.