Wireless fall sensor with GPS location for monitoring the elderly

Falls of the elderly has become a major public health problem in our modern society. It is both the first cause of accidental death, but also the beginning of the loss of autonomy from these people. In this context, the paper describes a solution based on an energy-efficient embedded device capable of detecting the fall, to send a warning to a control and monitoring processing station and to locate the person in a close external environment. Fall detection, location, processing and signal analysis, and data transmission are provided by an accelerometer, a GPS receiver, a microcontroller and a Zigbee technology transceiver.