RESEARCH ARTICLE


Easily Installable Wireless Behavioral Monitoring System with Electric Field Sensor for Ordinary Houses



S Tsukamoto*, 1, H Hoshino2, T Tamura3
1 Division of Life Science and Engineering, School of Science and Engineering, Tokyo Denki University, Japan
2 Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Tokyo Denki University, Japan
3 Department of Medical System Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Chiba University, Japan

Article Information


Identifiers and Pagination:

Year: 2008
Volume: 2
First Page: 49
Last Page: 57
Publisher Id: TOMINFOJ-2-49
DOI: 10.2174/1874431100802010049

Article History:

Received Date: 1/1/2008
Revision Received Date: 28/1/2008
Acceptance Date: 10/3/2008
Electronic publication date: 27/3/2008
Collection year: 2008

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2008 Bentham Science Publishers Ltd.

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/), which permits unrestrictive use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the Division of Life Science and Engineering, School of Science and Engineering, Tokyo Denki University, Japan; E-mail: tsuka@mail.dendai.ac.jp


Abstract

This paper describes an indoor behavioral monitoring system for improving the quality of life in ordinary houses. It employs a device that uses weak radio waves for transmitting the obtained data and it is designed such that it can be installed by a user without requiring any technical knowledge or extra constructions. This study focuses on determining the usage statistics of home electric appliances by using an electromagnetic field sensor as a detection device. The usage of the home appliances is determined by measuring the electromagnetic field that can be observed in an area near the appliance. It is assumed that these usage statistics could provide information regarding the indoor behavior of a subject. Since the sensor is not direction sensitive and does not require precise positioning and wiring, it can be easily installed in ordinary houses by the end users. For evaluating the practicability of the sensor unit, several simple tests have been performed. The results indicate that the proposed system could be useful for collecting the usage statistics of home appliances.

Keywords: behavioral monitoring, wireless, electric field, electric appliance.