Indoor Roaming Activity Detection and Analysis of Elderly People using RFID Technology

Smart Home (SH) is a house or an apartment equipped with advanced automation technologies to provide the occupants with intelligent monitoring and actionable information that can be situation specific. Recent research indicates that the population over the age of 60 is growing at an alarming rate, which is estimated that by 2050 this particular group will have globally increased by over 50%. With such an increase, the sense of eldercare is being emphasized among nowadays and Smart Home is undoubtedly a promising solution to the problem. This research paper involves the SH architecture that includes sensors, data communication, and data integration. The system collects movement based activity data from the elderly using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology. The research also discusses why RFID is chosen among other sensors. RFID is the use of radio waves to read and capture information stored on a tag attached to an object. A tag can be read from up to several feet away and does not need to be within direct line-of-sight of the reader to be tracked. The RFID system is made up of two parts such as a label and a reader. This paper presents a study of why movement based activity detection can be used in the longterm to help elderly people living alone in a Smart Home. The work focuses on the need to manage the data and how the system must be maintained.