A Study and Analysis of Wireless based Localization and Motion Processing Systems for Healthcare Applications

Position estimation and motion processing in 3D space are becoming increasingly popular because they find applications in many fields including navigation, surveying, gaming, security, medical, etc. Conventional tracking systems are based on a global positioning system (GPS) or similar principles. Traditionally, localization is done with the help of distance measurements of known reference and unknown target points with respect to each other. The coordinate of unknown target point can be obtained by solving set of quadratic distance equations. In this paper, we study a number of localization and motion processing systems and compare them based on several performance metrics. In our study, we consider a range of previously proposed designs and systems that can be employed in a room-size setting for healthcare and medical applications. We also discuss the basic building blocks and main components of such systems including the choices of communication protocols, suitable sensor network architecture, and tracking algorithm. Finally, we present our analysis of uncertainties in localization and the sources from which these errors arise. Keywords—Healthcare, Localization, Motion processing, Sensor network, Trilateration, Wireless protocols