Technical report, IDE1110, August 2011 ICT System Design & Implementation Using Wireless Sensors to Support Elderly In-home Assistance Master’s Thesis in Embedded and Intelligent Systems Stefan Plank, Thomas Nowotny & Thomas J. Lampoltshammer School of Information Science, Computer and Electrical Engineering Halmstad University ICT System Design & Implementation Using Wireless Sensors to Support Elderly In-home Assistance Master’s Thesis in Embedded and Intelligent Systems School of Information Science, Computer and Electrical Engineering Halmstad University Box 823, S-301 18 Halmstad, Sweden 2 August 2011 3 4 ICT System Design & Implementation Using Wireless Sensors to Support Elderly In-home Assistance Preface We like to say thank you to all that supported us and without them this thesis would not have become real. First of all we like to state our highest gratitude to our supervisors Edison Pignaton de Freitas and Professor Tony Larsson, as well as Wagner Ourique de Morais. Their experience, advice, help and encouragement have made this thesis possible. Also, we like to thank Josef H¨ollwerth of K-E-B.com Elektrotechnik GmbH for providing the needed technical equipment regarding the prototype. In addition to that, we like to thank Andreas Unterweger for his profound job as proof-reader of the thesis. Furthermore, we like to give profuse thanks to our families and friends who gave us consolation during this intense and debilitating time. Stefan Plank, Thomas Nowotny and Thomas Lampoltshammer Halmstad University, August 2011 2 Abstract Around the globe the number of older people in relation to the rest is constantly growing. As a result, medical and care facilities cannot handle the growing number of patients. Therefore, elderly in-home assistance gets more attention an importance. Due to issues regarding memory, physical strength and reduced self-assessment, old people face a lot of challenges in accomplishing their activities of daily living. This thesis is meant to address these problems by analysing the required infrastructure of a home-care facility as well as the arising issues regarding used components, especially wireless sensors. After the analysis, a prototype of a home-care system is designed and implemented. Furthermore, the issue of energy consumption of the used wireless sensor node is addressed by modifying the intelligence of the used sensor. After that, the design and components of the prototype used for the energy consumption analysis is explained, together with the programming structure of the sensor nodes used in this thesis. Thereupon, the results are of the simulations are discussed and compared with the authors ‘expectations. Finally the overall outcomes of the thesis are analysed and summed up, followed by a short outlook of further possible improvements and developments. 3 ICT System Design & Implementation Using Wireless Sensors to Support Elderly In-home Assistance Contents PREFACE ...............................................................................................................................................................2 ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................................................3 INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................................................5 1.1 APPLICATION AREA AND MOTIVATION ......................................................................................................5 1.2 PROBLEM STUDIED .....................................................................................................................................5 1.3 APPROACH CHOSEN TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM ............................................................................................5 1.4 THESIS GOALS AND EXPECTED RESULTS ....................................................................................................6 1.5 STRUCTURE................................................................................................................................................6 2 ICT AND HEALTHCARE ..........................................................................................................................8 3 ELDERLY IN-HOME ASSISTANCE ...................................................................................................... 12 3.1 SYSTEM DESIGN ....................................................................................................................................... 12 3.1.1 Related Work ....................................................................................................................................... 15 3.1.2 Problem Statement ............................................................................................................................... 15 3.2 SENSOR RELATED ENERGY CONSUMPTION .............................................................................................. 15 3.2.1 Related Work ....................................................................................................................................... 17 3.2.2 Problem Statement ............................................................................................................................ 17 4 SYSTEM DESIGN AND RESULTS ......................................................................................................... 19 4.1 SYSTEM CONCEPT .................................................................................................................................... 19 4.2 SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION ....................................................................................................................... 21 4.2.1 Sensor Setup ........................................................................................................................................ 21 4.2.2 Base Station ......................................................................................................................................... 25 4.2.3 Camera Setup ...................................................................................................................................... 25 4.2.4 Web Server and Application Setup ...................................................................................................... 25 4.2.5 Web Server ........................................................................................................................................... 26 4.2.6 Camera Control ................................................................................................................................... 27 4.2.7 Database Design & Implementation .................................................................................................... 28 4.2.8 SIP Server ........................................................................................................................................... 32 4.2.9 Network ................................................................................................................................................ 33 4.2.10 Programming ..................................................................................................................................... 33 5 EXPERIMENTS AND RESULTS ............................................................................................................ 37 5.1 SENSOR NODE INTELLIGENCE CONCEPT ................................................................................................... 38 5.2 DISCUSSION OF RESULTS .......................................................................................................................... 39 5.3 DISCUSSION OF AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH .......................................................................................... 41 6 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................................... 45 7 FUTURE WORK ........................................................................................................................................ 47 8 REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................................... 49 9 APPENDIX ................................................................................................................................................. 55 9.1 DATABASE DESIGN ................................................................................................................................... 55 9.2 HISTORICAL FOUNDATION OF ELDERLY IN-HOME ASSISTANCE ............................................................... 57 9.3 WIRELESS TECHNOLOGIES IN ELDERLY IN-HOME ASSISTANCE ............................................. 60 9.3.1 ZigBee .................................................................................................................................................. 60 9.3.2 LonWorks ......................................................................................................................................... 63 9.3.3 Z-Wave .............................................................................................................................................. 67 9.3.4 Comparison between ZigBee and Z-Wave ......................................................................... 70 4 Introduction 1.1 Application Area and Motivation