Software Architecture of a User-Level GNU/Linux Driver for a Complex E-Health Biosensor

Biosensor devices transform healthcare services from a physician, hospital- or clinic-centric system to one that directly involves patients. In this work, we develop the software architecture of a GNU/Linux driver for a complex biosensor (called STMicro Bodygateway). Our multithreaded driver supports data acquisition from multiple on-board sensors, capturing raw Bluetooth packets via rfcomm, processing them to retrieve associated biosignals, and transmitting extracted biometric data over Ethernet to a server in soft real-time. In our experimental framework, our driver commands the BGW sensors to transmit either an ECG signal at 256 Hz, or accelerometer (x, y, z) data at 50 Hz. For both cases, performance results indicate that our Linux driver can sustain soft real-time behavior.