Systematic literature review of ambient assisted living systems supported by the Internet of Things

Ambient assisted living (AAL) proposes a vision of the future in which older people can remain in their homes on their own for as long as possible, guaranteeing care and attention thanks to intelligent systems capable of making their lives easier. In parallel, the Internet of Things (IoT) proposes environments where different ‘things’ surrounding the user are able to communicate with each other through the Internet. This allows the creation of intelligent environments, which, in turn, are a requirement of AAL systems. Therefore, there is a relevant synergy between AAL and IoT, where the latter allows the creation of more intelligent and transparent AAL systems for users. This paper makes a systematic literature review (SLR) of AAL systems supported by IoT. We have explored aspects of interest such as the types of systems, the most popular technologies used in their development and the degree of compliance regarding the characteristics that any system of this type should have. Besides, the difficulty of evaluating user satisfaction due to the lack of real evidence is analyzed. This SLR, carried out according to the procedure proposed by Kitchenhan, is based on a selection of 61 papers from among 643 initial results published between 2015 and 2020. As a result of the analysis conducted, several challenges and opportunities that remain open in the field of IoT-supported AAL have been outlined.