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Recent technological developments have led to the production of inexpensive, non-invasive, miniature magneto-inertial sensors, ideal for obtaining sport performance measures during training or competition. This systematic review evaluates current evidence and the future potential of their use in sport performance evaluation. Articles published in English (April 2017) were searched in Web-of-Science, Scopus, Pubmed, and Sport-Discus databases. A keyword search of titles, abstracts and keywords which included studies using accelerometers, gyroscopes and/or magnetometers to analyse sport motor-tasks performed by athletes (excluding risk of injury, physical activity, and energy expenditure) resulted in 2040 papers. Papers and reference list screening led to the selection of 286 studies and 23 reviews. Information on sport, motor-tasks, participants, device characteristics, sensor position and fixing, experimental setting and performance indicators was extracted. The selected papers dealt with motor capacity assessment (51 papers), technique analysis (163), activity classification (19), and physical demands assessment (61). Focus was placed mainly on elite and sub-elite athletes (59%) performing their sport in-field during training (62%) and competition (7%). Measuring movement outdoors created opportunities in winter sports (8%), water sports (16%), team sports (25%), and other outdoor activities (27%). Indications on the reliability of sensor-based performance indicators are provided, together with critical considerations and future trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a millimeter wave (mmWave) communication system with transmit/receive (Tx/Rx) beamforming antennas, small variation in device behavior or an environmental change can destroy beam alignment, resulting in power loss in the received signal. In this situation, the beam-tracking technique purely based on the received signal is not effective because both behavioral changes (rotation, displacement) and environmental changes (blockage) result in power loss in the received signal. In this paper, a motion sensor based on microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) as well as an electrical signal is used for beam tracking to identify the cause of beam error, and an efficient beam-tracking technique is proposed. The motion sensors such as accelerometers, gyroscopes, and geo-magnetic sensor are composed of an attitude heading reference system (AHRS) and a zero-velocity detector (ZVD). The AHRS estimates the rotation angle and the ZVD detects whether the device moves. The proposed technique tracks a beam by handling the specific situation depending on the cause of beam error, minimizing the tracking overhead. The performance of the proposed beam-tracking technique is evaluated by simulations in three typical scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, an adaptive, autocovariance-based event detection algorithm is proposed, which can be used with micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) accelerometer sensors to build inexpensive and power efficient event detectors. The algorithm works well with low signal-to-noise ratio input signals, and its computational complexity is very low, allowing its utilization on inexpensive low-end embedded sensor devices. The proposed algorithm decreases its energy consumption by lowering its duty cycle, as much as the event to be detected allows it. The performance of the algorithm is tested and compared to the conventional filter-based approach. The comparison was performed in an application where illegal entering of vehicles into restricted areas was detected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A bulk micromachined inertial measurement unit (MIMU) is presented in this paper. Three single-axis accelerometers and three single-axis gyroscopes were simultaneously fabricated on a silicon wafer using a bulk micromachining process; the wafer is smaller than one square centimeter. In particular, a global area optimization method based on the relationship between the sensitivity and layout area was proposed to determine the layout configuration of the six sensors. The scale factors of the X/Y-axis accelerometer and Z-axis accelerometer are about 213.3 mV/g and 226.9 mV/g, respectively. The scale factors of the X/Y-axis gyroscope and Z-axis gyroscope are about 2.2 mV/°/s and 10.8 mV/°/s, respectively. The bias stability of the X/Y-axis gyroscope and the Z-axis gyroscope are about 2135 deg/h and 80 deg/h, respectively. Finally, the resolutions of X/Yaxis accelerometers, Z-axis accelerometers, X/Y-axis gyroscopes, and Z-axis gyroscopes are 0.0012 g/ √Hz , 0.0011 g/ √Hz , 0.314 ° /s/ √Hz , and 0.008 ° /s/ √Hz , respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several devices and measurement approaches have recently been developed to perform ballistocardiogram (BCG) and seismocardiogram (SCG) measurements. The development of a wireless acquisition system (hardware and software), incorporating a novel high-resolution micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) accelerometer for SCG and BCG signals acquisition and data treatment is presented in this paper. A small accelerometer, with a sensitivity of up to 0.164 µs/µg and a noise density below 6.5 µg/ Hz is presented and used in a wireless acquisition system for BCG and SCG measurement applications. The wireless acquisition system also incorporates electrocardiogram (ECG) signals acquisition, and the developed software enables the real-time acquisition and visualization of SCG and ECG signals (sensor positioned on chest). It then calculates metrics related to cardiac performance as well as the correlation of data from previously performed sessions with echocardiogram (ECHO) parameters. A preliminarily clinical study of over 22 subjects (including healthy subjects and cardiovascular patients) was performed to test the capability of the developed system. Data correlation between this measurement system and echocardiogram exams is also performed. The high resolution of the MEMS accelerometer used provides a better signal for SCG wave recognition, enabling a more consistent study of the diagnostic capability of this technique in clinical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low-cost MEMS accelerometers have the potential to be used in a number of tilt-based monitoring applications but have the disadvantage of being very sensitive to temperature variation (thermal drift). In this paper, we analyze the thermal behavior of a low-cost sensor in the range −10 to +45 °C in order to provide a simple compensation strategy to mitigate this problem. For sensor analysis, we have developed a miniaturized thermal chamber, which was mounted on a tilting device to account for tilt angle variation. The obtained raw data were used to construct low degree polynomial equations that by relating the measurement error induced by thermal drift (i.e., acceleration residuals) to temperature and inclination (of each specific axis), can be used for thermal compensation. To validate our compensation strategy, we performed a field monitoring test and evaluated the compensation performance by calculating RMS errors before and after correction. After compensation, the RMS errors calculated for both the X and Y axes decreased by 96%, indicating the potential of using a simple set of equations to solve common drawbacks that currently make low-cost MEMS sensors unsuitable for tilt-based monitoring applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]