Wireless Sensor Networks for data acquisition and information fusion: A case study

Data acquisition is one of the most relevant aspects in tele-monitoring systems. Information fusion helps these systems to better unify data collected from different sources. This paper presents a case study that consists of a tele-monitoring system aimed at enhancing remote healthcare for dependent people at their homes. The system deploys a service-oriented architecture over a heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Networks infrastructure to create smart environments. Such architecture can be executed over multiple wireless devices independently of their microcontroller or the programming language they use. Furthermore, the system allows the interconnection of several networks from different wireless technologies, such as ZigBee or Bluetooth. This approach provides the system better flexibility to change its functionalities and components after deployment than other analyzed proposals. The system description, its architecture, and preliminary results of the system prototype implemented in a real environment are presented.