Development and evaluation of a compact motion sensor node for wearable computing

This paper presents a compact wireless sensor node for 3D motion sensing, which can be used in wearable computing research. The sensor node is based on a commercial orientation sensor module and a wireless communication module. To extend the lifetime of this motion sensor node in many wearable computing applications, a power management unit is designed and implemented, which consists of a micro controller and a tiny accelerometer. An algorithm is developed to reduce the power consumption when there is no significant movement detected by the accelerometer. Compared with other similar 3D wireless motion sensors, this sensor node is cheaper and more power-efficient. This paper describes the hardware and software design of the sensor node, as well as the experimental results which evaluate the performance of the sensor node.