System Architecture and Design Flow of Smart Mobile Sensing Systems

This study presents the architecture and design flow of smart mobile sensing systems that performs wireless sensor data transmission, data analysis and display in real-time. Multiple wireless protocols are used for sensor data transmission including the Bluetooth, cellular data network and Wi-Fi for Internet access, and Near Field Communication (NFC). An Android smartphone is utilized to demonstrate the design concept of an Intelligent Personal Communication Node (iPCN) and to perform real-time sensor data acquisition, processing, analysis, display and transmission. Tested sensors include acceleration, temperature, electrocardiography (ECG) and phonocardiography (PCG). For computational capability tests, we have observed the signal processing performance of the smartphone by implementing fast Fourier transform (FFT) of the received ECG signal, and QRS detection algorithm for spontaneous heart beat rate (HBR) estimation. This system has also been tested for multiple sensor node communication and on-demand sensor data acquisition. The smart mobile sensing system can also be applied to any environment that requires real-time sensing and wireless remote monitoring.