Wireless Sensor Network for Cardiac Activity Monitoring

This article presents a wireless sensor network capable to acquire and analyze indoor environmental quality (IEQ) parameters and improving such indoor conditions using actuator nodes. An additional WSN end node capable associated with user's physiological parameters monitoring in indoor conditions as part of ambient assisted living for elderly people is considered. The user's cardiac activity is sensed in an unobtrusive way and the acquired and primary processed data is displayed in real time by a developed web application. As a measurement channel associated with cardiac assessment, a Photoplethysmography (PPG) sensor is embedded in a daily used office chair. The proposed system also served to study the influence of indoor environment changes obtained through a set of distributed actuators on the user's cardiac activity. Preliminary experimental results are included in the paper.