Sports body sensor networks

With the rapid advances in sports technologies, athletes and sports coaches are constantly searching for improved performance assessment methods. Whilst athletic performances continue to improve, accurate training prescription and feedback is important to the consistency of the training outcome and maintaining the performance margin. Traditionally, the measurement of elite athlete performance is performed in laboratory settings, where comprehensive physiological and biomechanical parameters can be monitored. Further performance characteristics are acquired during competition, mostly through observation and memory recall, to assess the effectiveness of the training strategy. It is, however, difficult for laboratory based methods to replicate the exact physical and mental environment of the athlete during competition. The need for monitoring athletes under natural training environment has motivated the use of wearable devices for sports performance sensing. The purpose of this presentation is to describe the latest developments in body sensor networks (BSN) for athletes during training and outline the technical requirement of Sports-BSN hardware design, miniaturisation, packaging, as well as real-time data processing, sensor fusion, and data visualisation issues.