Developing an Empirical Proof-of-Concept for the Idea of the WiCare Project
The main goal of the carried out project was to analyze the impacts of the user mobility (as a moving scatterer) on the characteristics of the radio channel. This project prepared an empirical proof-of-concept to verify that fingerprints of user activities can be observed and detected in the characteristics of the radio channel.
MSc Student: Farhad Firoozi
Project Manager (Supervisor): Assoc. Prof. Alireza Borhani
Background and Concept
The WiCare project deals with the development of an ICT-based healthcare solution for supporting independent living of elderlies and has been built on the WiCarePre project (developed by Dr. Alireza Borhani) funded by NFR under IKTPLUSS initiatives. The main idea of the WiCare project is to develop a radical in-home wireless tracking system that detects pre-defined incidents threatening elderlies living on their own. According to the 2015 Aging Report [1] released by the European Commission, more than 30% of the Europeans will be over 65 by 2060. This will create a crucial demand for in-home eldercare, especially for those who live alone. One of the major challenges within eldercare is the detection of fall incidents. Such incidents may result in serious physical and psychological consequences [2]. Detecting falls successfully leads to immediate assistance and reduces negative impairments to health. Triggered by the aforementioned demand, there is a new trend in developing indoor solutions for monitoring elderlies living independently at home.
Summary: The main goal of the carried out project was to analyze the impacts of the user mobility (as a moving scatterer) on the characteristics of the radio channel. This project prepared an empirical proof-of-concept to verify that fingerprints of user activities can be observed and detected in the channel transfer function (CTF) and the power delay profile (PDP) of indoor radio channels. To this aim, we conducted an indoor radio measurement campaign at 5.9 GHz to record the time-variant CTF (TVCTF) affected by a moving person, who acted the following scenarios: a walking, a falling, and a sitting scenario. The results demonstrated that the human activities are recognizable and distinguishable through the temporal variations of the CTF and PDP.
The project findings were disseminated in form of the following paper (already accepted):
- F. Firoozi, A. Borhani, and M. Pätzold, " Experimental Characterization of Mobile Fading Channels Aiming the Design of Non-Wearable Fall Detection Radio Systems at 5.9 GHz ", in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. on Communication Systems (ICCS), Dec. 2016.
The 15th IEEE International Conference on Communication Systems (IEEE ICCS) be held on 14-16 December, in Shenzhen, China. The conference will feature keynote speeches by distinguished leaders in academia and industry, technical presentations, and invited sessions on all topics that interest researchers in the broad area of communication systems, networks, and applications. Dr. Borhani will present our paper in the track dealing with “Medical ICT Systems” and/or “Antenna, Propagation & Channel Modeling”.
References
The main [1] The European Commission, “The 2015 ageing report: underlying assumptions and projection methodologies,” European Economy, Aug. 2014. DOI: 10.2765/76255
[2] C. J. L. Murray and A. D. Lopez, “Global and regional descriptive epidemiology of disability: Incidence, prevalence, health expectancies and years lived with disability,” in Global Burden Disease, vol. 1, pp. 201–246, Aug. 1996.