Wireless Sensor Networks for Rehabilitation Applications: Challenges and Opportunities

Abdelkrim Hadjidj (1, 2) , Marion Souil (1, 2) , Abdelmadjid Bouabdallah (1, 2) , Yacine Challal (1, 2) , Henry Owen (3)

1 Heudiasyc - Heuristique et Diagnostic des Systèmes Complexes [Compiègne]
2 Labex MS2T - Laboratoire d'Excellence "Maîtrise des Systèmes de Systèmes Technologiques"
3 ECE GeorgiaTech - School of Electrical and Computer Engineering - Georgia Insitute of Technology

Rehabilitation supervision has emerged as a new application of wireless sensor networks (WSNs), with unique communication, signal processing and hardware design requirements. It is a broad and complex interdisciplinary research area on which more than one hundred papers have been published by several research communities (electronics, bio-mechanical, control and computer science). In this paper, we present WSNs for rehabilitation supervision with a focus on key scientific and technical challenges that have been solved as well as interdisciplinary challenges that are still open. We thoroughly review existing projects conducted by several research communities involved in this exciting field. Furthermore, we analyze and discuss the advantage and weakness of each project. Our aim is to gather information that encourage engineers, clinicians and computer scientists to work together in this field to tackle the di erent challenges. We believe that bridging researchers with di erent scientific backgrounds could have a significant impact on the development of WSNs for rehabilitation and could improve the way rehabilitation is provided today.

Domaines: Réseaux et télécommunications [cs.NI]

Abdelkrim Hadjidj, Marion Souil, Abdelmadjid Bouabdallah, Yacine Challal, Henry Owen. Wireless Sensor Networks for Rehabilitation Applications: Challenges and Opportunities. Journal of Network and Computer Applications (JNCA), 2013, 36, pp.1-15. ⟨10.1016/j.jnca.2012.10.002⟩. ⟨hal-00762929⟩