A Consortium for Security and Medical Sensor Systems Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, SUNY Stony Brook   E-Team Project Descriptions

Title:  Wireless Sensor Networks for Health Monitoring

Description: With the aging of the baby boomers, it is predicted that the US population over age 65 will grow from its 1999 level of 34.6 million persons to approximately 82 million in 2050, a 137% increase. The most rapid surge in our senior population will take place between 2011 and 2030. During this 19-year interval, seniors will expand from 13% of our population to 22% of our population.

In this project, our goal is to design a wireless health monitoring system that can monitors users ’ vital signs and notifies relatives and medical personnel of their location during life threatening situations.

Such health monitoring system combines wireless sensor networks, existing RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) and Vital Sign Monitoring technology to simultaneously monitor vital signs while keeping track of the users’ location. The use of wireless technology makes it possible to install the system in all types of homes and facilities. Radio frequency waves can travel through walls and fabric, sending the vital sign and location information to a central monitoring computer via a miniature transmitter network. Such information can easily be accessed from any location over the Internet.

Student Qualifications:  Students applying for this project should have (1) background in some of the following areas: communication, signal processing, C++ programming, electronics; (2) GPA higher than 3.0; (3) interested in working in an inter-institutional team; and (4) interested in entrepreneurial activities.

Potential Industrial Sponsors:  Sentry Technology, 1881 Lakeland Avenue, Ronkonkoma, New York

Students members of the E-team for this project:

Title: ANGEL: Embedded platform for improving on-campus security

Description: The goal of the project is to develop an embedded, wireless platform that can constitute a cost efficient implementation solution for security related applications

The hardware platform will be microprocessor based, and incorporate a large variety of sensors, like GPS receiver, compass and proximity sensor. The software part will include a library of procedures that will allow quick development of security related applications. Related procedures might involve automated sending of messages, backtracking, notification of objects or events considered as dangerous, survival in extreme situations (like flooding), and so on.

The platform will be used to develop several security related applications, like finding the shortest way to safe places, and aiding visually impaired people in an environment with heavy traffic. 

Student Qualifications: embedded systems, C/assembly code programming, real-time systems.

Potential Industrial Sponsors: Symbol. Northrop Grumman, Keyspan, Data Device Corporation.

Students members of the E-team for this project:

Ying Wei

Title: PDA platform for exchanging real-time multimedia medical data through mutual inductance

Description: The goal of the project is to develop a wireless signal reader based on PDA platform that can support multimedia real-time data communications. This project has two components. First, we will consider signal generated through mutual inductance where the signal is equalized to maintain signal integrity. The channel and filtering will be modeled and simulated for various realistic environments. Signal interference will also be investigated. Second, multimedia data communications such as voice, snap shot images, real-time data stream will be developed. Multicast and broadcast capability will be developed using commercially available PDA in the project. All the data will be exchanged using SIP protocols. All communication will assume IEEE 802.11 environment.

Student qualifications: Embedded platform programming in C/C++. Window Pocket PC operating systems, signal processing and communication theory.

Student Qualifications: Embedded platform programming. Window Pocket PC operating systems

Potential Industrial Sponsors: Symbol Technologies

Students members of the E-team for this project:

Title:  RFID for Personal Asset Tracking

Description: Radio frequency identification, or RFID, uses radio waves to automatically identify people or objects. The information about the object is stored in an RFID tag that is attached to the object. An RFID reader sends radio waves and based on the reflected waves from the RFID tag, it converts this signal into digital information that can be processed. One advantage of RFID compared to bar codes is that RFID tags can be read as long as they are within range of a reader whereas bar codes are line-of-sight.

The goal of this project is to design and build a portable RFID system for tracking and securing assets and items (such as passport, keys, laptop,..) carried by a person. If one of the assets moves out of a certain range, the owner is alerted. The processing of the information might require a microcontroller or microprocessor. The system should have the following capabilities:

• Variable range for the tag reader (variable power, frequency,…)
• Asset information is contained in a passive RFID tag to reduce the cost of the system.
• The tag reader should be battery operated, capable of running applications to determine which items are out of range, and alert the individual.
• The owner should be able to specify:
• items to be tracked (up to 10 items)
• tracking range
• action to be taken if an item is not detected

Some of the issues that need to be addressed in the design include tag collision and interference from multiple readers.