Design of a portable and multifunctional dependable wireless communication platform for smart health care

Abstract

The future of dependable wireless communication will encompass a much eclectic range of applications. Not only are traditional telecommunication facilities such as text messaging, audio and video calling, video download and upload, web browsing, and social networking being improved but also a wide range of sensors and devices in the “Internet of things,” such as “smart cities” and smart hospital applications are being adopted. Researchers are trying hard to ensure timely detection of various diseases anytime and anywhere. In this research, a portable and multifunctional software-defined radio (SDR) platform is designed to detect different activities of human life, in particular for the monitoring of health. The wireless channel state information (WCSI) in the presence of the human body is investigated to capture movements using different frequency bands and is the key idea of this work. Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) with 64 subcarriers and the magnitude and phase responses in the frequency domain are used to capture the WCSI of the activity. The design is validated through simulation and real-time experiments. However, it is widely accepted that simulation results fail to capture real-life situations. Extensive and repeated real-time experiments are carried out on the hardware platform to ensure that the activity is detected accurately. The results achieved by detecting hand motion activity ensure that the system is capable of detecting human body motions and vital signs.