Impulse Radio Ultra-Wideband Communications for Localization and Tracking of Human Body and Limbs Movement for Healthcare Applications

Abstract

Abstract-Accurate and precise motion tracking of limbs and human subjects has technological importance in various healthcare applications. The use of Impulse Radio Ultra Wideband (UWB) technology due its inherent properties is of recent interest for high accuracy localisation. This paper presents experimental investigations and analysis of indoor human body localisation and tracking of limb movements in 3D based on IR-UWB technology using compact and cost-effective body worn antennas. The body-centric wireless channel characterisation has been analysed in detail using parameters such as path loss magnitude, number of multipath components, RMS delay spread, signal amplitude and Kurtosis with the main focus to differentiate between line-of-sight (LOS) and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) situations. Fidelity of the received signal is also calculated for different activities and antenna positions to study the pulse preserving nature of the UWB antenna when it is placed on the human body. The results reported in this paper have high localisation accuracy with 90 % in the range of 0.5 to 2.5 cm using simple and cost-effective techniques which is comparable to the results obtained by the standard optical motion capture system.

Foldable All‐Textile Cavity‐Backed Slot Antennas for Personal UWB Localization

“…Given their mechanical flexibility and the possibilities for unobtrusive on‐body integration, textile implementations are promising candidates to fill in a Wireless Body Area Network system's antenna role (Skrivervik & Marrocco, ). In the last decade, a significant amount of research has been invested in the development of textile antennas, enabling applications for first aid responders (Castel et al, ; Dierck et al, ; Lilja et al, ), health care (Agneessens et al, ; Bait‐Suwailam et al, ; Bharadwaj et al, ; Rogier et al, ), sports (Mandal et al, ), space (Kennedy et al, ), military (Kaija et al, ; Lee et al, ), radiofrequency identification (Khan et al, ), and by extension the Internet of Things (Lee & Choi, ; Lemey & Rogier, ; Loss et al, ). The opening of the 3.1–10.6 GHz UWB band along with the publication of the IEEE802.15.4 standard (IEEE Standard for Local and metropolitan area networks–Part 15.4: Low‐Rate Wireless Personal Area Networks (LR‐WPANs), ) creates possibilities which recently are being picked up by textile electronics developers.…”

A weighted least squares consideration for IR-UWB radar based device-free object positioning estimation for indoor environment

“…It uses an exceedingly wide bandwidth low power impulse signal to continuously transmitting and receiving the impulse signal for object detection within a range [22][23]. IR-UWB radar has shown promising utilization in realizing device-free object positioning estimation method for indoor environment [24][25][26][27][28][29]. The exceedingly wide bandwidth and short pulses waveforms can facilitate in minimizing the effect of multipath interference, good signal penetration through obstacles such as walls and objects as UWB pulses are operating in low power and simple hardware configuration, which can be easily used as an embedded type sensor [30].…”

3-D Printing of Conformal Antennas for Diversity Wrist Worn Applications

“…Body worn systems can benefit from antenna diversity. It can improve channel capacity, compensate for some of the human body effects such as loss in antenna matching, radiation efficiency and blocking of the signal from the human body movements [18] - [21].…”