Performance Evaluation of a Communication Protocol for Vital Signs Sensors Used for the Monitoring of Athletes

Abstract

Monitoring vital signs in athletes, mainly during training, is of crucial importance for both the athlete and the coach, in order to avoid overtraining. Overtraining is an extreme state of fatigue that forces athletes to rest for several weeks having a negative impact on athlete's performance, health, and daily life. A wireless sensor network (WSN) combines embedded computing technology with communication technology in order to collect information of the network coverage area and send it to the observer. In this paper, we present results of system's performance evaluation for the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, including the physical (PHY) layer and media access control (MAC) sublayer, in order to collect and store large sets of athletes' data as well as providing results about network values such as end-to-end delay, load, and throughput captured from global and objects statistics.

Cyclist Performance Assessment based on WSN and Cloud Technologies

“…In the past, these networks were generally wired. Wireless sensor networks consist, essentially, on lowpower, light-weight sensor nodes [11].…”

“…Due to their fast development, WSNs are being used extensively in the scientific and technological fields. Several studies on medical, commercial and industrial [11] applications show successful results, increasing the interest of new users in this type of monitoring solutions. Nowadays, the use of these networks to collect and interpret data is facilitated.…”

“…Sports science pulls the athlete to the limit and therefore, athletes should be monitored so that they do not reach the level that can lead to serious injuries [26]. Monitoring athletes by reading vital signs, and evaluating other signs like the force exerted during training is very important, as it allows to evaluate their performance, avoiding overtraining [11] and serious injuries. This monitoring can also be used during injury recovery [27].…”

“…These devices are used to build embedded systems and electronics projects. There are several boards to do this type of projects such as Raspberry Pi or BeagleBone microcomputers, but the most commonly used is Arduino [3], [11], [25], [37], since it is low-cost, has many libraries available and a really good online support.…”

Integrated Smart Home Services and Smart Wearable Technology for the Disabled and Elderly

“…In the proposed approach, for monitoring the main health parameters of the elderly and disabled people and tracking their locations, a smart vest is used. The smart vest collects various 3 parameters related to the physical condition of the monitored person and sends them to data management system over a wireless sensor network (WSN), a kind of wireless network consisting of hundreds to thousands of low-power multi-functional sensor nodes with sensing, computation and communication capabilities (Akyildiz et al, 2002;Alemdar and Ersoy, 2010;Kiokes et al, 2014). It also enables the monitored person's location to be tracked simultaneously.…”