Wireless hydrotherapy smart suit for monitoring handicapped people

Abstract

This paper presents a smart suit, water impermeable, containing sensors and electronics for monitoring handicapped people at hydrotherapy sessions in swimming-pools. For integration into textiles, electronic components should be designed in a functional, robust and inexpensive way. Therefore, small-size electronics microsystems are a promising approach. The smart suit allows the monitoring of individual biometric data, such as heart rate, temperature and movement of the body. Two solutions for transmitting the data wirelessly are presented: through a low-voltage (3.0 V), low-power, CMOS RF IC (1.6 mm x 1.5 mm size dimensions) operating at 433 MHz, with ASK modulation and a patch antenna built on lossy substrates compatible with integrated circuits fabrication. Two different substrates were used for antenna implementation: high-resistivity silicon (HRS) and Corning Pyrex #7740 glass. The antenna prototypes were built to operate close to the 5 GHz ISM band. They operate at a center frequency of 5.705 GHz (HRS) and 5.995 GHz (Pyrex). The studied parameters were: substrate thickness, substrate losses, oxide thickness, metal conductivity and thickness. The antenna on HRS uses an area of 8 mm 2 , providing a 90 MHz bandwidth and ~0.3 dBi of gain. On a glass substrate, the antenna uses 12 mm 2 , provides 100 MHz bandwidth and ~3 dBi of gain.

The Use of Wearable Sensors in Human Movement Analysis in Non-Swimming Aquatic Activities: A Systematic Review

“…Other studies that were not included in this systematic research (due to inclusion criteria), compared the abdominal pressure performing specific drills in water and on land [17], developing a smart suit for monitoring in water body kinematics activities in a hydrotherapy approach [25][26][27], and monitoring handicapped people in an aquatic environment [18]. Hence, it can be summarized that the studies published about human movement in an aquatic environment using sensors, especially the ones included in this analysis, aimed to analyze the lower limbs' kinematics (walking and performing a set of squat exercises) of healthy young adults, healthy elderly, and participants with specific pathologies affecting their lower limbs.…”

“…However, the use of sensors in such water-based activities in comparison to swimming is rather scarce [12,13]. Basically, such studies aimed to compare the walking pattern on dry land and in underwater conditions [12], propose movement analysis methodology based on inertial and magnetic sensors [14], assess the kinematics of underwater walking [13], perform some specific movements/exercises (e.g., squat and some variants) [15,16], compare abdominal pressure between dry land and underwater conditions [17], or monitor handicap people in hydrotherapy sessions [18]. The body of knowledge about the use and application of sensors technology is widely explored in a swimming perspective, with original studies and some systematic reviews.…”

5.7GHz on-chip antenna/RF CMOS transceiver for wireless sensor networks

“…This makes it able to recognize qualitatively and quantitatively the presence of respiratory disorders, both during wake and sleep-time in free-living patients with chronic heart failure, providing clinical and prognostic significance data [8,9].…”