CARER: Efficient dynamic sensing for continuous activity monitoring

Advancement in wireless health sensor systems has triggered rapidly expanding research in continuous activity monitoring for chronic disease management or promotion and assessment of physical rehabilitation. Wireless motion sensing is increasingly important in treatments where remote collection of sensor measurements can provide an in-field objective evaluation of physical activity patterns. The well-known challenge of limited operating lifetime of energy-constrained wireless health sensor systems continues to present a primary limitation for these applications. This paper introduces CARER, a software system that supports a novel algorithm that exploits knowledge of context and dynamically schedules sensor measurement episodes within an energy consumption budget while ensuring classification accuracy. The sensor selection algorithm in the CARER system is based on Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP). The parameters for the POMDP algorithm can be obtained through standard maximum likelihood estimation. Sensor data are also collected from multiple locations of the subjects body, providing estimation of an individual's daily activity patterns.