Hindawi Publishing Corporation
International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks
Volume 2013, Article ID 190813, 9 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/190813
Research Article
An Internet of Things Approach for Managing Smart Services
Provided by Wearable Devices
Pedro Castillejo, José-Fernán Martínez, Lourdes López, and Gregorio Rubio
Next-Generation Networks and Services (GRYS) Research Group, Research Center on Sofware Technologies and
Multimedia Systems for Sustainability (CITSEM), Technical University of Madrid (UPM), “La Arboleda-Campus Sur” Building,
Crt. Valencia, Km. 7, 28031 Madrid, Spain
Correspondence should be addressed to Pedro Castillejo; pcastillejo@diatel.upm.es
Received 28 September 2012; Revised 22 January 2013; Accepted 1 February 2013
Academic Editor: Marc St-Hilaire
Copyright © 2013 Pedro Castillejo et al. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License,
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Te Internet of Tings (IoT) is growing at a fast pace with new devices getting connected all the time. A new emerging group
of these devices is the wearable devices, and the wireless sensor networks are a good way to integrate them in the IoT concept
and bring new experiences to the daily life activities. In this paper, we present an everyday life application involving a WSN
as the base of a novel context-awareness sports scenario, where physiological parameters are measured and sent to the WSN by
wearable devices. Applications with several hardware components introduce the problem of heterogeneity in the network. In order
to integrate diferent hardware platforms and to introduce a service-oriented semantic middleware solution into a single application,
we propose the use of an enterprise service bus (ESB) as a bridge for guaranteeing interoperability and integration of the diferent
environments, thus introducing a semantic added value needed in the world of IoT-based systems. Tis approach places all the data
acquired (e.g., via internet data access) at application developers disposal, opening the system to new user applications. Te user
can then access the data through a wide variety of devices (smartphones, tablets, and computers) and operating systems (Android,
iOS, Windows, Linux, etc.).
1. Introduction
Modern society is looking for user-friendly aiding systems,
able not only to remotely monitor the health of the elderly and
people sufering from chronic diseases, but also to fnd a safe
and efcient routine to practice some sport or single exercises
in an outdoor or indoor environment (such as gymnasium),
in order to improve each person’s level of ftness and health.
In this context, Internet of Tings (IoT)-related systems are
able to bring solutions.
Te IoT paradigm can be built using wireless sensor
networks (WSNs) as the leading technology to acquire and
manage data. Connecting other smart elements to a WSN
(smartphones, watches, tablets, etc.) may also improve the
user experience in the IoT, and it could act as a starting
point for the use of the technology. If the smart devices are
wearable, the frst technology-access barrier is broken: the
user just has to “wear” the technology as a daily-life garment.
A diferential value of a WSN node is the fact that any
external sensor can be connected in an easy way to itself,
and the data sensing does not depend on the network man-
agement. For example, if the application needs biometric or
human physiological parameters (blood pressure, heart rate,
breathing rate, etc.) an external sensor must be connected
in some way to the node. A very easy and fast solution is
using wireless communications protocols, such as Bluetooth.
However, in this scenario a new challenge springs up: the
existence of diferent types of devices or platforms (as there is
no standardization in this kind of sensors), so it is desirable to
abstract the hardware features and protocols from high-level
layers. Tis can be done with an intermediate level, called
middleware [1]. It would be very useful if this middleware
level is able both to process environmental measures, but, and
receiving user parameters with several sensors: localization,
speed, health status, preferences, and so forth. In this way,
a context-awareness system could be developed, and new