BedSense: A Bed-Mounted Sensor Node System for Sleep Activities Monitoring and Nocturnal Falls Detection
Ali K. Ibrahim, Kabalan Chaccour, Amir Hajjam El Hassani, Mohamed Hajjam, Emmanuel Andrès · IEEE Sensors Journal · 2024
The increasing elderly population is affecting the social-economical balance in developed countries. Falls in general and particularly nocturnal falls are a major key-role players in the healthcare cost. In this paper, we propose a novel real-time sensor node system, non-wearable, and mounted on the contour of the bed mattress to continuously monitor sleep activities and detect nocturnal falls. The proposed system consists of eight node sensors, each consisting of an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), a Microcontroller Unit (MCU), and a serial network interface. The sensor nodes communicate on a single bus with a remote monitoring station. The system utilizes bed vibrations from accelerometers generated by body movements to detect and categorize sleep activities as well as identify fall events. The system generates real-time results and provides information about sleeping postures. The efficacy and robustness of the system are assessed by measuring key performance metrics, including sensitivity, accuracy, precision, and f1-Score. Experiments were conducted on 25 volunteers showed results surpassing 90% for all four metrics namely, sensitivity, accuracy, precision, and F1 score.