• Journal of KIISE:Computing Practices and Letters
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.244-254
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• 2009

This paper describes a remote system to monitor the circadian behavioral patterns of elders who live alone. The proposed system was designed and implemented to provide more conveniently and reliably the required functionalities of a remote monitoring system for elders based on the development of first phase prototype[2]. The developed system is composed of an in-house sensing system and a server system. The in-house sensing system is a set of wireless sensor nodes which have pyroelectric infrared (PIR) sensor to detect a motion of elder. Each sensing node sends its detection signal to a home gateway via wireless link. The home gateway stores the received signals into a remote database. The server system is composed of a database server and a web server, which provides web-based monitoring system to caregivers (friends, family and social workers) for more cost effective intelligent care service. The improved second phase system can provide 'automatic diagnosis', 'going out detection', and enhanced user interface functionalities. We have evaluated the first and second phase monitoring systems from real field experiments of 3/4 months continuous operation with installation of 9/15 elders' houses, respectively. The experimental results show the promising possibilities to estimate the behavioral patterns and the current status of elder even though the simplicity of sensing capability.