Sensors and Actuators B 140 (2009) 390395

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/snb

Wireless sensor network based wearable smart shirt for ubiquitous health and
activity monitoring
Young-Dong Lee a , Wan-Young Chung b,
a
b

Division of Computer & Information Engineering, Dongseo University, Busan 617-716, South Korea
Division of Electronics, Computer and Telecommunication Engineering, Pukyong National University, Daeyeon-Dong, Nam-Gu, Busan 608-737, South Korea

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 25 August 2008
Received in revised form 25 April 2009
Accepted 27 April 2009
Available online 5 May 2009
Keywords:
Wireless sensor network
Wearable
Smart shirt
Ubiquitous healthcare
Activity monitoring

a b s t r a c t
The smart shirt which measures electrocardiogram (ECG) and acceleration signals for continuous and real
time health monitoring is designed and developed. The shirt mainly consists of sensors for continuous
monitoring the health data and conductive fabrics to get the body signal as electrodes. The measured
physiological ECG data and physical activity data are transmitted in an ad-hoc network in IEEE 802.15.4
communication standard to a base-station and server PC for remote monitoring. The wearable sensor
devices are designed to t well into shirt with small size and low power consumption to reduce the
battery size. The adaptive ltering method to cancel artifact noise from conductive fabric electrodes in a
shirt is also designed and tested to get clear ECG signal even though during running or physical exercise
of a person.
2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
With the fast increase in aging population around the world,
numbers of patient suffering for age related disease are increasing.
Wireless health monitoring system using health sensors in-home
and out of hospital may assist residents and caregivers by providing non-invasive and invasive continuous health monitoring with
minimum interaction of doctors and patients.
A number of wearable physiological monitoring systems have
been developed to monitor the health status of the individual
wearer of the elderly [16]. A wearable physiological monitoring
system called Smart Vest to monitor various physiological parameters such as electrocardiogram (ECG), photoplethysmograph (PPG),
heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature and galvanic skin
response (GSR) have been developed [2]. The acquired physiological
parameters are transmitted wireless to a remote monitoring station
along with the geo-location of the wearer. A wrist worn wearable
medical monitoring and alert system (AMON) targeting high-risk
cardiac/respiratory patients has been developed to monitor physiological parameters such as ECG, heart rate, blood pressure, skin
temperature [3]. Vivometrics has developed a wearable physiological monitoring system called Life Shirt to monitor various cardio

The Paper presented at the International Meeting of Chemical Sensors 2008

(IMCS-12), July 1316, 2008, OH, USA.
Corresponding author. Tel.: +82 51 898 0616; fax: +82 51 629 6210.
E-mail address: wychung@pknu.ac.kr (W.-Y. Chung).
0925-4005/$ see front matter 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.snb.2009.04.040

respiratory parameters [4]. A wearable physiological monitoring

system for space and terrestrial applications named Life Guard to
monitor the health status of the astronauts in space is developed [5].
The Georgia Tech, Smart Shirt characterized as a wearable motherboard allows for a variety of vital parameters to be incorporated
into the vest, which can be easily and comfortably worn by the
soldiers [5,6].
Though a number of ongoing research efforts above are focusing
on wireless vital signal monitoring issues, many technical hurdles
still need to be resolved in order to reduce inconvenience of wearing
in normal life for smart shirt. The paper presents a wearable smart
shirt with both physiological ECG and physical activity detectible
sensors to improve the accuracy of the patient diagnosis, and at the
same time the shirt is non-invasive, comfortable, and convenience
to wear. A patient may not feel the existence of the wearable sensors in the smart shirt when the devices are attached on patients
body or in the fabric of the shirt. The proposed wearable sensor
devices in this study are designed to t well into shirt with small
size, low power consumption and offer the patients wireless sensor network communication based on IEEE 802.15.4 [7]. Under this
wireless sensor network communication environment, we can offer
a wide range of mobility to the patient than general wireless communication environment.
2. Wearable smart shirt system
Fig. 1 shows the overall system architecture of the wearable
smart shirt for ubiquitous health and activity monitoring, which

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391

Fig. 1. System architecture of the u-healthcare system with wearable smart shirt.

consists of a shirt with integrated wireless sensor nodes, a basestation and server PC for remote monitoring. Wireless sensor
network consists of a large number of small nodes, which have
built-in computing, power, sensors to acquire physiological and
activity data from the human body and wireless transmission and
reception capability. The smart shirt is compatible with wireless
sensor network thus the individual physiological data from each
smart shirt are transmitted in ad-hoc wireless communication for
further processing using a wireless link.

port and a series of digital I/O lines. The wearable sensor node uses
M25P80 is an 8Mb (1 Mbit 8) serial ash memory with write protection mechanism, accessible from SPI bus. To minimize the size
of wearable sensor node, the USB programming board as a separate module is designed. This module is needed only when nodes
are connected to the server PC either for application download or
when the node acts as a base-station [8].

2.1. Wearable sensor node

Fig. 2 illustrates the block diagram of the sensor board which

consists of an ECG interface and a three-axis accelerometer sensor
circuit. An ECG is a bioelectric signal which records the hearts electrical activity versus time; therefore it is very important and basic
diagnostic tool for assessing heart function. An electrocardiogram is
obtained by measuring electrical potential between various points
of the body using a biomedical instrumentation amplier. A lead
records the electrical signals of the heart from a particular combination of recording electrodes which are placed at specic points on
the patients body. The standard 12-lead ECG usually uses in limited
mode recording situations such as the tape recorded ambulatory
ECG (usually 2-lead) or intensive care monitoring at the bedside
(usually 1 or 2 lead). Another important part of home healthcare
is to monitor the behavior and physical activity in daily life. There
are ongoing researches to develop the fall detection systems using
three-axis accelerometer. The system can collect the accelerometer
signals to determine whether the person with device attached has
fallen or not.
ECG signals from the electrodes are amplied with a gain of
300 (24.8 dB) and ltered with the cut-off frequencies of 0.05 Hz
and 123 Hz in the sensor board. An ECG electrode has two conductive fabric electrodes (Polar Electro Oy, Finland) which are woven
into the fabric. In addition, the sensor board has also a three-axis

The wearable sensor nodes are responsible for acquiring the

physiological data and transmitting it to the base-station. The sensor nodes are designed to be tiny in size and consume low operating
power to reduce battery size which can last for longer durations.
The sensor node has limited battery power, and computing and
communication capability due to the physical structure.
Table 1 summarizes the specications of the designed wearable
sensor node for u-health and activity monitoring, which features
an ultra low power Texas Instruments MSP430 micro-controller
with 10KB RAM, 48KB ash memory and 12-bit A/D converter. It
supports several low power operating modes, consuming as low as
5.1 A in sleep mode and 1.8 mA in active mode. The CC2420 wireless transceiver in the wearable sensor node is IEEE 802.15.4 Zigbee
compliant. It has programmable output power, maximum data rate
of 250 Kbps, and hardware provides PHY and some MAC layer functions. The CC2420 is controlled by the MSP430F1611 through SPI
Table 1
Specication of the designed wearable sensor node.
Species of device
Accelerometer
(MMA7260Q, Freescale)
ECG (2 electrodes)
A/D converter (embedded
with MSP430F1611)
Wireless transceiver
(CC2420, Chipcon)

Specication item

Specication

2.2. Sensor board

3-axis
Gain
Cut-off frequency

300 (24.8 dB)

0.05123 Hz

Resolution

12 bits

Sampling rate

200 Hz

Frequency band

2.42.485 GHz

Sensitivity
Transceiver rate
Current draw

95 dBm
250 Kbps
Rx: 18.8 mA
Tx: 17.4 mA
Sleep mode: 1 A

Fig. 2. Block diagram of a sensor board.

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Fig. 3. Wireless sensor node (a) front side and (b) back side.

accelerometer sensor (MMA7260Q, Freescale) to measure acceleration signals for activity monitoring of a patient. The shape of a
sensor board with wireless sensor node is designed as a round shape
to wear comfortable and convenience.
2.3. Wearable smart shirt with integrated sensors
The measured ECG and accelerometer data are transmitted to
server PC in wireless sensor network. The ECG signal is one of very
important vital signal to know the health status of a patient or
elderly person and three-axis accelerometer signals is used to know
the activity of them. If both signals, that is, ECG and accelerometer
data are measured simultaneously, the resolution of diagnosis can
be improved. Fig. 3 shows the architecture of the designed wireless
sensor node. The wireless sensor node is round in shape and 40 mm
physical size in diameter.

Fig. 4. Integrated wearable sensor node combined with a sensor board in a two story
structure.

The smart shirt is consisting of a wireless sensor node, an

ECG and accelerometer sensor board and conductive fabric electrodes for ECG measurement in normal shirt design. To reduce
the size of the integrated wearable sensor node, the structure of
two PCB stories which is composed of a wireless sensor node
plate for communication in wireless sensor network and a sensor board plate with ECG interface and accelerometer. Two round
shape PCB boards of a wireless sensor node and a sensor board
are combined together as shown in Fig. 4. A wireless sensor node
is placed at the top position and a sensor board with ECG interface and accelerometer circuits is placed at the bottom position of
two stories wearable sensor node structure. To obtain physiological ECG data, two conductive fabric electrodes are extended from
ECG interface circuit of the sensor board and are knitted into the
shirt.
The smart shirt is a wearable T-shirt designed to collect ECG and
acceleration signals from the human body continuously in daily life.
The shirt contains ECG and accelerometer sensors that can be used
to monitor vital signs such as heart rate, ECG and acceleration. The
two-oor structure of the wearable sensor node reduce the wide-

Fig. 5. The uHealth software architecture in the wireless sensor node.

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393

Fig. 6. The wearable shirt in test: (a) smart shirt with an integrated wearable sensor node and (b) test of the u-healthcare system during exercise on a treadmill.

ness of a normal single oor wireless sensor node structure with

sensors and give convenience in wear with two AAA size batteries.

would also interface to low level platform specic TinyOS hardware drivers. Routing component provides the function of routing
to data and topology updates to the application in (Fig. 5).

2.4. Software architecture for smart shirt

3. Experimental results
TinyOS [9] is an open source component-based, event-driven
operating system and platform targeting wireless sensor network.
TinyOS is an embedded operating system written in the nesC programming language as a set of cooperating tasks and processes.
TinyOS provides interfaces and components for common abstractions such as packet communication, routing, sensing, actuation
and storage.
The software architecture for the smart shirt was developed
in TinyOS. The main application level component is uHealth
which controls the event handling of various hardware and software events. The component ECG/Accelerometer samples ECG
and accelerometer signals from the sensor board. The GenericComm provides generic packet handling and basic SendMsg and
ReceiveMsg interfaces by TinyOS messages. The GenericComm

Wearable shirt has to be convenient to the wearer when the person wear the shirt. The wearable sensor node system was designed
to t perfectly into shirt. Fig. 6(a) shows the wearable smart shirt
which consist of a conductive fabric electrode pairs and the wearable sensor node system. The wearable sensor node is attached on
the wearers chest as shown in Fig. 6(b). The smart shirt provides
an extremely versatile framework for the incorporation of sensing, monitoring and information processing devices. Moreover, the
smart shirt can be use in a variety of applications such as battleeld,
public safety, health monitoring, sports and tness, among others
[10,11].
The vital signal monitoring in wearing the designed smart shirt
was tested to real time monitoring of the ECG and acceleration sig-

Fig. 7. ECG signal variations during walking, running and resting on a treadmill.

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Fig. 8. Acceleration signals from a three-axes accelerometer during walking, running and resting of a person on a treadmill.

nals of a wearer. For the monitoring of physiological ECG data and

activity of the smart shit wearer simultaneously, a treadmill was
used. The speed of treadmill was controlled in the speed of 5 km/h
for walking and 8 km/h for running. The system test on a treadmill
is performed during the wearer is standing without any big motion
(resting), walking and running on a treadmill as shown in Fig. 7.
Fig. 8 shows the test results for walking, running and resting after
the exercise.
The raw acceleration signals from three-axes accelerometer in
the wearable sensor node of wearable shirt during exercise of a
person on a treadmill are measured in wireless sensor network as
shown in Fig. 8. Acceleration signals provide valuable information
about wearers activity classication such as walking, running and
resting (standing).
Three-axes acceleration signal together with an ECG signal
which include motion artifact noise are measured as shown in
Fig. 9. Acceleration features generated during body movements are
depend on the type of activity of the person performed, such as
Fig. 10. Adaptive ltered ECG signal without motion artifact.

resting, walking or running. The Y-axis acceleration data among

three-axes data is most sensitive to the motion of human body
because Y-axis is ones height direction. And motion artifact of ECG
signal during human action is mainly from Y-axis noise also. The
Y-direction acceleration signal is well correlated to noise coming
due to motion artifact in ECG signal.
Thus Y-axis signal from the accelerometer is taken as a reference
input in adaptive ltering. The adaptive ltering method which uses
the accelerometer as a source of noise reference is well applicable to
reduce motion artifact effectively in stress ECG as shown in Fig. 10.
4. Conclusions

Fig. 9. ECG signal with motion artifact and three-axes accelerometer signals.

A smart shirt with wireless sensor network compatibility is

designed and fabricated for continuous monitoring of physiological ECG signal and physical activity signal from an accelerometer
simultaneously. To collect physiological ECG data and activity of
the smart shit wearer simultaneously, the performance test is done

Y.-D. Lee, W.-Y. Chung / Sensors and Actuators B 140 (2009) 390395

on a treadmill by a wearer who is resting, walking and running

on a treadmill with various speeds. The motion artifact included
in the stress ECG signal was well removed by the proposed adaptive ltering method using the accelerometer as a source of noise
reference.
A wearable smart shirt with both physiological ECG and physical
activity detectible sensors transfers the signals without any troubles in wireless sensor network environment at the performance
test on a treadmill. Thus the developed smart shirt system can be
applicable to improve the accuracy of the patient diagnosis by the
continuous monitoring with non-invasive, comfortable and convenient shirt to wear in wireless sensor network environment.

[7]

[8]

[9]

[10]

[11]

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Biographies
Young-Dong Lee received BS degree in Information and Communication Engineering from Dongseo University, Korea, in 2004 and MS in Computer Network
Engineering, Dongseo University in 2006. Since 2006 to now, he has been PhD
student in Dongseo University, Busan, Korea. The areas of interest are Ubiquitous
Healthcare, Wireless sensor Network and Embedded Systems.
Wan-Young Chung received BS and MS degrees in Electronic Engineering from
Kyungpook National University, Daegu, Korea in 1987 and 1989, respectively and
PhD degree in Sensor Engineering from Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan in 1998.
From 1993 to 1999, he was an assistant professor in Semyung University. Since 1999
to 2008 he was an associate professor in Dongseo University. He is now an associate
professor in division of electronics, computer and telecommunication engineering
in Pukyong National University in Busan, Korea from September, 2008. The areas
of interest are Ubiquitous Healthcare, Wireless sensor Network and Embedded Systems.