Use of Local Intelligence to Reduce Energy Consumption of Wireless Sensor Nodes in Elderly Health Monitoring Systems
Thomas J. Lampoltshammer,
Edison Pignaton de Freitas,
Thomas Nowotny,
Stefan Plank,
João Paulo Carvalho Lustosa da Costa,
Tony Larsson,
Thomas Heistracher
Affiliations
Thomas J. Lampoltshammer
School of Information Technology and Systems Management, Salzburg University of Applied Sciences, Urstein Süd 1, Puch/Salzburg 5412, Austria
Edison Pignaton de Freitas
Department of Applied Computing, Federal University of Santa Maria, Santa Maria 97105-900, Brazil
Thomas Nowotny
School of Information Technology and Systems Management, Salzburg University of Applied Sciences, Urstein Süd 1, Puch/Salzburg 5412, Austria
Stefan Plank
School of Information Technology and Systems Management, Salzburg University of Applied Sciences, Urstein Süd 1, Puch/Salzburg 5412, Austria
João Paulo Carvalho Lustosa da Costa
Laboratory of Array Signal Processing, Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Brasilia, Campus Universitário Darcy Ribeiro, S/N, Asa Norte, Brasília 70910-900, DF, Brazil
Tony Larsson
School of Information Science, Computer and Electrical Engineering, Halmstad Universtity, Kristian IV:s väg 3, Halmstad 301 18, Sweden
Thomas Heistracher
School of Information Technology and Systems Management, Salzburg University of Applied Sciences, Urstein Süd 1, Puch/Salzburg 5412, Austria
The percentage of elderly people in European countries is increasing. Such conjuncture affects socio-economic structures and creates demands for resourceful solutions, such as Ambient Assisted Living (AAL), which is a possible methodology to foster health care for elderly people. In this context, sensor-based devices play a leading role in surveying, e.g., health conditions of elderly people, to alert care personnel in case of an incident. However, the adoption of such devices strongly depends on the comfort of wearing the devices. In most cases, the bottleneck is the battery lifetime, which impacts the effectiveness of the system. In this paper we propose an approach to reduce the energy consumption of sensors’ by use of local sensors’ intelligence. By increasing the intelligence of the sensor node, a substantial decrease in the necessary communication payload can be achieved. The results show a significant potential to preserve energy and decrease the actual size of the sensor device units.
