Design & Implementation Of Fall Detection Prototype System For Elderly People

The international communities as a whole pay more and more attentions on aging population while entering aging periods. Fall is one of the common accident happened in elderly people, causing serious damage physically as well as psychologically.A fall detecting system and relevant algorithm is designed based on accelerometer, which is being developed to safely and accurately monitor the user while still allowing complete privacy and security. It is combined with micro-sensors, digital signal process and wireless sensor network (WSN) technologies together, weighing the characteristic of elderly people's body balance. The implementation of remote monitor on daily life status of elderly people who live alone, could significantly improve the aid efficiency and life quality of the old, assessing the capability to live alone and healthy status, allowing user to stay at familiar environment and receive necessary help in time which could reduce the distress of user so as to cut down the occurrence of fall.This paper stems from the Chongqing National Science Foundation project,"Research on fall detection mechanism base on WSN"(cstc 2007bb2194). The concept and application of WSN is being introduced in this thesis, followed by the background and possibility of applying WSN on medical monitor are discussed and researched. It focuses on the hardware design of fall detection node, wireless transmitting and software realization of fall detecting algorithm as well as backstage monitor system. Utilizing Internet and RF to transmit acceleration value and diagnostic information feedback, the backstage monitoring software is developed with .NET platform in a modularization way. Through data communication, fall detection and diagnosing and database managing module, the transmission, flashback and prompt analysis of remote acceleration data are implemented along with interreact between doctor and user, minimizing death ratio caused by accidental fall. The system designed in this paper is highly integrated, small sized, intelligent and solidly reliable, without confinement of users'active status or time etc.As field experiment shows that this detection system can distinguish fall event from normal activities, and raise fall alarm automatically to get a shortened interval of aid.