A fall detection system based on a wireless Zigbee sensor network

A sensor system for fall detection was subject of a research project at Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits. Starting with position analysis based on measured sensor data (3 axis acceleration sensor), various movement patterns had been tracked and analyzed (walking, climbing stairs, fall) with to develop simple and efficient algorithms in time domain. These algorithms had to be designed for microcontroller capabilitites to create a tiny, low power and intelligent sensor unit. Data acquisition, signal processing and wireless communication is all done by a single microcontroller inside ZigBee communication module.