Design of a Wearable Multi-Sensor Node for Human Movement Identification based on RSSI Measurements

A portable Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) composed of physiological and inertial sensors integrated into a telemedical system promises to become an important infras-tructure element in home-based remotely supervised patient rehabilitation. It offers a better and less expensive alternative to rehabilitation and benefits patients, physicians, and society through abnormal conditions early detection, and supervised rehabilitation by continuous monitoring for extended periods of time and near real-time updates of patients' medical records through the Internet. In this work, a compact, energy efficient and multi-sensing wireless body attached sensor node with a 4-layer PCB configuration and a 35 mm diameter is developed to implement a WBAN-based system for health status monitoring. The node uses CC430F5137IRGRZ microcontroller integrating the necessary hardware for implementing RSSI measurements. Therefore, an RF transmission is designed to monitor the RSSI measurements for distance estimation and movement identification. Indeed, all sensing and location information are stored in Firebase real-time database, then processed and visualized by a web interface.