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Researchers at NASA Ames Research Centre and Stanford University have developed a personal monitoring system called Lifeguard ^[1](1) for use with Astronauts. The requirements were for a rugged device capable of daily use in an extreme environment, whether due to pressure (hyperbaric, hypobaric), vibration (shuttle launch), radiation (on-orbit), temperature and humidity (emergency workers) or other environmental factors. The system was successfully used for measuring human physiology during ground-based centrifuge experiments, during mountain climbing, and under-sea habitat (NEEMO) used by NASA. In addition, the system was recently utilized to transmit vital signs from Licancabur volcano in Chile at 19,700ft, reflected off an Inmarsat satellite, downlinked via France Telecom, across the Internet, and collaboratively view the physiological data in real-time at Stanford, NASA, and off-site in Monterey, California.

A good example of privacy policy and security aspects in a wireless sensor networks is the ALARM-NET "Assisted-Living and Residential Monitoring Network for pervasive, adaptive healthcare" ^[2] system developed by researchers at the University of Virginia- The system is intended for large scale monitoring of pepole in residential care settings The system monitors both the Circadian Activities (i.e. the 24 hour behavioural patterns) of the people, plus it also monitors physiological data (ECG, Pulse Ox etc). The hardware is based on MicaZ motes on Tiny OS. It integrates environmental and physiological sensors in a scalable, heterogeneous architecture. The system features context-aware power management, dynamic privacy policies, and data association. Communication is secured end-to-end to protect sensitive medical and operational information.

Harvard University rearchers have developed a system called CodeBlue ^[3] which was designed with reliability and robustness in mind. The reliability versus overhead dilemma is nicely illustrated in this paper. For example, using multiple transmissions per packet increases robustness from 63% to 98% which is good. However these data rates cause network saturation and reception ratios drop considerably. Bandwidth sharing among sensors was specifically identified as being a key issue in ensuring reliable communications

References

1. ↑ Lifeguard- A Personal Physiological Monitor For Extreme Environments. National Center for Space Biological Technologies, Stanford University http://lifeguard.stanford.edu/presentations/embc_lifeguard_paper_FINAL.pdf
2. ↑ Wood, G. Virone, T. Doan, Q. Cao, L. Selavo, Y. Wu, L. Fang, Z. He, S. Lin, J. Stankovic. "ALARM-NET: Wireless Sensor Networks for Assisted-Living
3. ↑ Victor Shnayder, Borrong Chen, Konrad Lorincz, Thaddeus R. F. FulfordJones, and Matt Welsh. "Sensor Networks for Medical Care". http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~mdw/papers/codeblue-techrept05.pdf

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