Physiological Monitoring of a Wrist-Worn Personal Locator Beacon User

• Main Authors: Alejandro DE MIQUEL, Pere MOLINA, Ismael COLOMINA, Marta BLÁZQUEZ, Daniel KATZ, Ohad BARAK, Michel MONNERAT, Thibaud CALMETTES
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: IFSA Publishing, S.L. 2016-11-01
• Series: Sensors & Transducers
• Subjects: Galileo; Personal locator beacon; Search and rescue; IMU.
• Online Access: http://www.sensorsportal.com/HTML/DIGEST/november_2016/Vol_206/P_2868.pdf

This paper presents the concept, developments and preliminary results of the Horizon 2020 project named SAT406M. The goal of this project is to develop an application based on a wrist-worn device, conceived to be a maritime application, and the use of European Global Navigation Satellite Systems, based on the Galileo Search and Rescue service, using its unique Return-Link-Message function, improving the mobility and safety of citizens. In particular for this paper, we focus on the development and the first testing and results of a physiological monitoring component included in the device. This component will provide the Search and Rescue services with additional information about the SAT406M user's physiological status once the distress alarm is triggered. The algorithm implemented uses some stochastic techniques to deduce the SAT406M user's physiological status, encoded in two bits, from sensor inputs. The results here presented, which are still preliminary results from an intermediate stage of the project, show a good accuracy in most of the cases. This makes us conclude that the algorithm has the potential to end up determining the SAT406M user's physiological status accurately enough, improving this way the user's safety.