We describe an effort to design and implement a reliable, secure, medium-bandwidth wireless personal area network (WPAN) that supports routine, continuous ambulatory physiological status monitoring of physically active warfighters. This proposal primarily addresses the development of a Warfighter Physiological Monitoring System, or WPSM, wireless sensor PAN. The WPAN supports the WPSM mission of continuous physiological data acquisition and real-time health, performance, and injury classification. Enabled by the WPAN, the WPSM comprises a light-weight, robust, self-contained body-worn, or wearable, system for monitoring such physiological parameters as heat, hydration, fatigue, and injury, Further, the WPAN enables the WPSM to provide early-warning indicators of exposure to biological/chemical weapons and pathogens. Finally, the WPAN enables the WPSM to enhance individual performance, improve planning and team-level situational awareness, and improve combat casualty care. The WPAN would be useful in general commercial environments, where team members collaborate and cooperate to accomplish a task. Furthermore, the WPAN would be useful in hazardous environments, where safety workers must operate to aid others in peril.
Benefits: The proposed communications technology will in the future be used in a variety of applications of interest to USARIEM, the Army, DoD, and civilian marketplaces. USARIEM, the most immediate user, will initially use this technology for researching human physiology unobtrusively in relation to morbidity and mortality. In situations of danger, the PAN, under certain circumstances linked to other PANs by wireless LANs or WANs, would be used to provide important physiological information under ordinary circumstances, but also critical clinical information in case a user were injured, wounded, or dead. Medics and other authorized persons could use RF communications to link to the PAN from a distance to obtain key information, rather than having to derive all information locally themselves. This would reduce the high mortality rate for medics who seek to treat warriors who are already dead. Further, robots and manually controlled transportation technologies can initiate remote treatment and remote surgery by moving to the location of personnel requiring treatment, then interacting with the PAN to obtain crucial information leading to treatment, and then enabling successful treatment. Since the sensors of the PAN would already have been in their proper place and monitoring crucial information, high quality information would be immediately available, when otherwise it would be extremely difficult to obtain this information. In a broader context, it can be rolled out to all the other services. Air Force pilots are an example of personnel for whom physiological monitoring can prove essential to peak performance when needed. The environmental conditions for peak performance vary from one individual to the next. Thus, technology is essential to monitor environments, individuals, the responses of their bodies, and their in vivo performance, without interfering with their performance. The inductive PAN technology enables this because it provides reliable inter-communications of the smart sensors and the central processing, while not adding noticeable bulkiness or limiting motion. In civilian uses, this technology will eventually serve as a standard part of the life support system for people exposed to rigorous exertion (or the reverse) in risky indoor and outdoor environments. One example is fire fighters. There are one million firefighters in American, and many more in international markets. A highly portable, on-body PAN is part of a toolset that will offer a great deal to fire fighters. Similar uses would serve law enforcement officers, airport security personnel, inspection personnel, "road warriors," sign-in personnel at such places as car rental agencies, and participant-observer researchers.
Keywords: PAN, WLAN, i2c, wireless, "near-field", "body-worn", sensor, induction
