Hadwen Tim, Smallbon Vanessa, D'Souza Matthew
Annu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2017 Jul;2017:771-774. doi: 10.1109/EMBC.2017.8036938.
Continuous GPS tracking devices always suffer short battery life when used by caregivers to reduce the risk of wandering to dangerous areas by dementia patients. Currently the best existing tracker for dementia patients on the market only supports less than 10 hours battery life with a gigantic battery. It not only requires daily battery charging from patients/caregivers, but also becomes a very restrictive device. In this paper we inspected individual energy consumption of the components in a GPS tracker and proposed a novel energy efficient, small wristband by integrating the latest LoRa communication and GPS duty cycling technologies. We verify our prototype's communication distance and energy efficiency through extensive experiments in the real world. Our model and data show the GPS wristband is able to support up to 40 hours continuous GPS tracking with a frequent 60 seconds location update rate. Its range also spans 3km, effectively monitoring patient locations.
当护理人员使用连续GPS跟踪设备来降低痴呆症患者徘徊到危险区域的风险时，这些设备的电池续航时间总是很短。目前市场上现有的针对痴呆症患者的最佳跟踪器，即便配备巨大的电池，也仅支持不到10小时的电池续航时间。它不仅需要患者/护理人员每天充电，而且还成为了一种非常受限的设备。在本文中，我们检查了GPS跟踪器中各组件的个体能耗，并通过集成最新的LoRa通信和GPS占空比技术，提出了一种新型的节能小型腕带。我们通过在现实世界中的广泛实验，验证了我们原型的通信距离和能源效率。我们的模型和数据表明，这款GPS腕带能够以60秒的频繁位置更新率支持长达40小时的连续GPS跟踪。其覆盖范围也达3公里，能有效监测患者位置。
