E-ALPHA: Edge-based assisted living platform for home cAre

Novel and emerging IoT-based AAL (Ambient Assisted Living) services promise to notably improve elderly's lifestyles in terms of health and well-being, particularly in the care facilities context (senior neighborhood, clinics, retirement villages, etc). A simulation-driven platform named E-ALPHA (Edge-based Assisted Living Platform for Home cAre) is presented in this paper, investigating its main potential in supporting i) both Cloud and Edge Computing paradigms and their specific deployments; ii) several communication protocols to guarantee a satisfactory level of interoperability among different IoT platforms; and iii) system developers through a simulation-based design. This last feature is particularly important to outline the most appropriate applications/platform configuration for a real deployment and the related expected performance according to the chosen configuration (in terms of number of involved devices, hardware characteristics, required connectivity specifications, etc). Realistic input, coming from a solid and already developed real testbed, have been used in a specific use case to show and validate the potential of E-ALPHA.