Elderly-care motion sensor using UWB-IR

Requirement for monitoring the state of the elderly in care facilities is increasing year by year and the increase in accidents involving them becomes great concern. In this paper, an ultra-wideband impulse-radio (UWB-IR) monitoring sensor is suggested which focuses on the bed status most critical to the elderly that need the assistance immediately. Employing our developed state detection algorithm based on ranging and motion estimation, the state can be detected that includes sleeping in a bed, sitting up in bed, falling down, wandering in room, going in and out at the door. The measurements were conducted in care facilities and the detection performance about the above mentioned state is investigated where various scenarios are considered. The measurement result shows that the detection rate is more than 95%.