IoT Sensing Capabilities: Sensor Deployment and Node Discovery, Wearable Sensors, Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN), Data Acquisition

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) is an emerging technological paradigm where the things can be connected from different fields through the Internet. The rapid advancement in communication technologies, actuators and low-cost sensing devices leads to extensive deployment of IoT devices. Such devices can be deployed in any public spaces provide detailed information about the behavior of individuals such as personalization, behavior change and personal health monitoring. IoT technology which is being deployed is specially designed to make it invisible, such that the technology does not manifest its presence to the users it is monitoring. For the IoT based healthcare applications, the Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) is gaining much popularity as wearable devices spring into the marketplace. Multiple sensor nodes can be deployed on different locations of the human body to measure the heartbeat, body temperature distribution, and detect falls. In addition to medical signals, the sensor nodes can be placed to track environmental conditions around the human body as well. Hence, wearable sensor systems afford valuable information about the impact of human health. These systems are not only limited for personal use, can be fitted on animal, car, etc. to construct a wireless sensor network. According to previous estimation, healthcare IoT solutions lay down the platform for extremely accessible, personalized and on-time services that will attain $1 trillion by 2025 hopefully. Wearable systems have emerged as a prominent area in healthcare for managing cardiovascular, neurological diseases etc. These sensors are used on the body surface or inside the human body non-invasively, however it is distinct from invasive implantable devices. This system will be particularly helpful for sensing information inside the human body as the sensors are designed and supported by flexible technologies. The sensing device collects data which is transmitted through wireless communication protocols to a server that is responsible to gather the datasets available for further analysis. WBAN comprised of heterogeneous nodes fixed in and around the human body which is connected to the network. It is characterized by IEEE 802.15 communication standard; generating huge volume of data and gathering it play a vital role in electronic healthcare. Data residing in multiple wireless devices need to be collected and analyzed effectively. Within WBAN datasets may be fragmented across many nodes and if practitioner’s node does not have the correct information then the quality of healthcare processing would be degraded. This chapter presents the overview of wearable sensors for tracking physiological and physical changes in daily life, their basics and applications. Wearable sensor based systems have enormous potentials to be completely explored and it is anticipated that advancement in technologies will afford the transformation how healthcare will be in future. It highlights the significance of localization in on-body area network and it gives an overview about evaluating the performance of localization systems. It also presents the several types of sensors and methodologies to fuse the data generated by sensors. Since we foreseen a future where the existence of miniature devices communicating through packet radio in both indoor and outdoor environments.