A Pilot Study on BSN-Based Ubiquitous Energy Expenditure Monitoring

This paper presented a wearable body sensor network (BSN) that could be potentially employed for dynamic body energy expenditure monitoring. Three compact BSN nodes were deployed at wrist, abdomen and ankle, respectively. Acceleration signals from the multiple body sites were used to calculate a whole body weighted acceleration value. Preliminary results indicated that the standard deviation of the whole body value was smaller than that from any individual body site. There was a strong linear correlation between the whole body weighted acceleration value and the speed, but this correlation was highly subject-dependant. The pilot study presented the first several steps towards a pervasive approach for body energy expenditure monitoring.