Tremor Acquisition System Based on UWB Wireless Sensor Network

Abstract

This work suggests to quantify and analyze tremorusing an Ultra Wide-Band (UWB) Wireless Sensor Network(WSN). WSN based on UWB technology provides a new technology for non contact tremor assessment with extremely low radiation and penetration through walls. Tremor is the target symptom in the treatment of many neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s disease (PD), midbrain tremor, essential tremor (ET) and epilepsy. The common instrumental approaches for the assessment of tremor are motion capture devices and video tracking systems. The new tremor acquisition system is based on transmission of a wideband electromagnetic signal from multiple sensor nodes placed indifferent locations in a home and analysis of the received signal in each sensor node. The sensors can exchange information between each other with a coded transmission or send the raw data to a UWB hub for further analysis. The data can be then sent by an internet gateway to a health care center for monitoring and for medical care. This paper describes the basic system and gives a fundamental detection technique. For a feasibility test we built an UWB based sensor node prototype and examined its performance with an arm model that fluctuated in the range of clinical tremor frequencies (3-12 Hz). A future development of this work can lead to a low cost monitoring system installed at any home, hospital or school to continuously assess and report tremor conditions during daily life activities.