Section: Software and Platforms

Ziggie: a Platform for Wireless Body Sensor Networks

Participants : Olivier Sentieys, Olivier Berder, Arnaud Carer, Antoine Courtay [corresponding author] , Robin Bonamy.

Keywords: Wireless Body Sensor Networks, Low Power, Gesture Recognition, Localization, Hardware and Software Platform

The Zyggie sensor node has been developed in the team to create an autonomous Wireless Body Sensor Network (WBSN) with the capabilities of monitoring body movements. The Zyggie platform is part of the BoWI project funded by CominLabs. Zyggie is composed of:

• An ATMEGA128RFA1 microcontroller,

• An MPU9150 Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU),

• An RF AS193 switch with two antennas,

• An LSP331AP barometer,

• A DC/DC voltage regulator with a battery charge controller,

• A wireless inductive battery charge controller and

• Some switches and control LEDs.

The IMU is composed of a 3-axis accelerometer, a 3-axis gyrometer and a 3-axis magnetometer. The IMU is communicating its data to the embedded microcontroller via an I2C protocol. We also developed our own MAC protocol for synchronization and data exchanges between nodes. The Zyggie platform is used in many PhD works for evaluating data fusion algorithms (RSSI + IMU data) (Zhongwei Zheng, UR1 and Alexis Aulery, UBS/UR1), low power computing algorithms (Alexis Aulery, UBS/UR1), wireless protocols (Viet Hoa Nguyen, UR1) and body channel characterization (Rizwan Masood, TB).