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Disruption-Tolerant Wireless Sensor Networking for Biomedical Monitoring in Outdoor Conditions

Monitoring the Cardiac Activity of Marathon Runners using DTN Techniques

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Abstract

Off-the-shelf wireless sensing devices open up interesting perspectives for biomedical monitoring. Yet because of their limited processing and transmission capacities most applications considered to date imply either indoor real-time data streaming, or ambulatory data recording. In this paper we investigate the possibility of using disruption-tolerant wireless sensors to monitor the biomedical parameters of athletes during outdoor sports events. We focus on a scenario we believe to be a most challenging one: the ECG monitoring of runners during a marathon race, using off-the shelf sensing devices and a limited number of base stations deployed along the marathon route. Field experiments conducted during intra-campus sports events show that such a scenario is indeed viable, although special attention must be paid to supporting episodic, low-rate transmissions between sensors carried by runners and roadside base stations.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Alan Srey who re-designed and implemented part of the Android application during a summer internship, and participated in some of the experiments whose results are presented in this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. IRISA - Université de Bretagne-Sud, Vannes, France

    Frédéric Guidec & Djamel Benferhat

  2. IRISA - École Normale Supérieure de Rennes, Rennes, France

    Patrice Quinton

Authors
  1. Frédéric Guidec
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  2. Djamel Benferhat
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  3. Patrice Quinton
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Frédéric Guidec.

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Guidec, F., Benferhat, D. & Quinton, P. Disruption-Tolerant Wireless Sensor Networking for Biomedical Monitoring in Outdoor Conditions. Mobile Netw Appl 19, 684–697 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11036-013-0491-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11036-013-0491-6

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