Long term measurement of human joint movements for health care and rehabilitation purposes

This paper presents a novel human joint motion recording method, The recorded data are sent to the receiver, which is placed in the close proximity or in the same room with the patient, via a wireless short-range communications system that guarantees 3 days of battery life. This method exploits commercially available bend sensors to convert mechanical human joint movements into electric signals which are then acquired, pre-processed, wireless transmitted and post-processed. We propose a novel way of sensor´s application, underlying advantages and drawbacks which could be drastically reduced by electronic circuitry anyway. The network configuration and the specific air interface are chosen to satisfy system requirements in terms of data rates, battery autonomy, and mobility.