Data Transmission Efficiency in Bluetooth Low Energy Versions.

One important aspect when choosing a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) solution is to analyze its energy consumption for various connection parameters and desired throughput to build an optimal low-power Internet-of-Things (IoT) application and to extend the battery life. In this paper, energy consumption and data throughput for various BLE versions are studied. We have tested the effect of connection interval on the throughput and compared power efficiency relating to throughput for various BLE versions and different transactions. The presented results reveal that shorter connection intervals increase throughput for read/write transactions, but that is not the case for the notify and read/write without response transactions. Furthermore, for each BLE version, the energy consumption is mainly dependable on the data volume. The obtained results provide a design guideline for implementing an optimal BLE IoT application.

Can telerehabilitation games lead to functional improvement of upper extremities in individuals with Parkinson's disease?

Parkinson's disease (PD) is treated by medication, less with deep brain stimulation and physiotherapy. Different opinions on the clinical meaningfulness of the physiotherapy or recommended intensive physiotherapy were found. Our objectives were to design intensive target-based physiotherapy for upper extremities suitable for telerehabilitation services and examine the clinical meaningfulness of the exergaming at an unchanged medication plan. A telerehabilitation exergaming system using the Kinect sensor was developed; 28 patients with PD participated in the study. The system followed the participants' movements and adapted the difficulty level of the game in real time. The outcomes of the study showed that seven out of 26 participants could set up the equipment at home alone. Clinical outcomes of Box and Blocks Test (mean: 47 vs. 52, P=0.002, Cohen's d=0.40), UPDRS III (mean: 27 vs. 29, P=0.001, d=0.22), and daily activity Jebsen's test; writing a letter (mean: 24.0 vs. 20.6, P=0.003, d=0.23); and moving light objects (mean: 4.4 vs. 3.9, P=0.006, d=0.46) were statistically significant (P<0.05) and considered clinically meaningful. The Nine-Hole Peg Test showed a statistically nonsignificant improvement (mean: 28.0 vs. 26.5, P=0.089, d=0.22). The participants claimed problems with mobility but less with activities of daily living and emotional well-being (PDQ-39). The findings lead to preliminary conclusions that exergaming is feasible, but may require technical assistance, whereas clinically meaningful results could be achieved according to validated instruments and an unchanged medication plan in individuals with PD.

Hardware accelerated compression of LIDAR data using FPGA devices.

Airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) has become a mainstream technology for terrain data acquisition and mapping. High sampling density of LIDAR enables the acquisition of high details of the terrain, but on the other hand, it results in a vast amount of gathered data, which requires huge storage space as well as substantial processing effort. The data are usually stored in the LAS format which has become the de facto standard for LIDAR data storage and exchange. In the paper, a hardware accelerated compression of LIDAR data is presented. The compression and decompression of LIDAR data is performed by a dedicated FPGA-based circuit and interfaced to the computer via a PCI-E general bus. The hardware compressor consists of three modules: LIDAR data predictor, variable length coder, and arithmetic coder. Hardware compression is considerably faster than software compression, while it also alleviates the processor load.