Exhaustive Description of the System Architecture and Prototype Implementation of an IoT-Based eHealth Biometric Monitoring System for Elders in Independent Living

• Main Authors: Cristian Vizitiu, Călin Bîră, Adrian Dinculescu, Alexandru Nistorescu, Mihaela Marin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-03-01
• Series: Sensors
• Subjects: e-Health; Internet of Things (IoT); elders; independent living; Active and Assisted Living (AAL); Systems Engineering
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/21/5/1837

In this paper, we present an exhaustive description of an extensible e-Health Internet-connected embedded system, which allows the measurement of three biometric parameters: pulse rate, oxygen saturation and temperature, via several wired and wireless sensors residing to the realm of Noncommunicable Diseases (NCDs) and cognitive assessment through Choice Reaction Time (CRT) analysis. The hardware used is based on ATMEGA AVR + MySignals Hardware printed circuit board (Hardware PCB), but with multiple upgrades (including porting from ATMEGA328P to ATMEGA2560). Multiple software improvements were made (by writing high-level device drivers, text-mode and graphic-mode display driver) for increasing functionality, portability, speed, and latency. A top-level embedded application was developed and benchmarked. A custom wireless AT command firmware was developed, based on ESP8266 firmware to allow AP-mode configuration and single-command JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) data-packet pushing towards the cloud platform. All software is available in a git repository, including the measurement results. The proposed eHealth system provides with specific NCDs and cognitive views fostering the potential to exploit correlations between physiological and cognitive data and to generate predictive analysis in the field of eldercare.