A Wearable Low-Power Sensing Platform for Environmental and Health Monitoring: The Convergence Project
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Low-Power Wearable Sensing Platform: Architecture, Specifications and Design
- Analog and digital sensors
- Data acquisition and visualization in real-time with specific a App developed by CEA-LETI (Grenoble, France)
- Radio Frequency (RF) Microcontroller Unit (MCU)
- Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) 2.4 GHz communication (data collection on mobile phone)
- Antenna circuit designed by our G-INP partner (Grenoble, France).
2.1. Electronic Architecture
2.2. Antenna
2.2.1. Antenna Specifications
2.2.2. Antenna Simulated Results
- The antenna in air (A1)
- The antenna with protected varnish and resin in air (A2)
- The antenna with protected layers above human’s wrist (A3)
- The antenna with protected layers folded around human’s wrist (A4)
2.3. Printed Circuit Board and Antenna Design
2.4. Consumption Test
2.5. Application Development
2.6. Integration
3. Sensors Characteristics
- -
- A bio-sensor, an ISFET sweat/pH sensor developed by EPFL [14]. The working principle similar to a MOSFET.
- -
- Gas sensors: a miniaturized gas sensor combining NO2, CO and NH3 gases on the same dye; with NO2 sensor developed by ENEA, NH3 sensor by UCL and CO sensor by IMT [7].
- -
- Humidity and Temperature sensors from STMicroelectronics, which are very low power with approximately 2 µA consumption @ 1 Hz output data rate. It is connected to µC via I2C bus and may be powered from 1.7 V to 3.6 V.
- -
- Activity sensor developed by EDI [4].
3.1. NO2 Sensor: Synthesis of the Sensing Materials
3.2. NO2 Sensor: Materials Characterizations
3.3. NO2 Sensor: Device Fabrication and Gas Sensing Protocol
3.4. CO Sensor: Preparation of Inkjet Material and Deposition
4. Tests and Results
4.1. NO2 Sensor: Results and Discussion
4.2. CO Sensor: RESULTS and Discussion
4.3. NO2 Sensor Tests with Low-Power Sensing Platform
5. Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
References
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Sensors | Sampling Rate (Hz) |
---|---|
Embedded activity sensor | 10 |
Embedded Temperature & humidity sensor | 1 |
Gas | 10 |
Activity platform (EDI) | 2 |
ISFET sweat/pH biosensor | 1 |
Temperature | 2 |
Conditions | Communication Distance | Transmission Power | Receiver’s Sensitivity | Desired Antenna Gain |
---|---|---|---|---|
Worst scenario | 10 m | −20 dBm | −90 dBm | −9.77 dB |
Best scenario | 10 m | 4 dBm | −90 dBm | −33.77 dB |
Tissue | Radius (mm) | Permittivity | Loss Tangent |
---|---|---|---|
Skin | 2 | 38.06 | 0.28 |
Fat | 5 | 5.29 | 0.15 |
Muscle | 12 | 52.79 | 0.224 |
Bone | 10 | 18.49 | 0.25 |
Conditions | Transmission Power | Receiver’s Sensitivity | Antenna Gain | Maximum Distance |
---|---|---|---|---|
In air | −20 dBm | −90 dBm | 2.65 dBi | 41.5 m |
On wrist | −20 dBm | −90 dBm | −2.44 dBi | 23.0 m |
On wrist (folded) | −20 dBm | −90 dBm | −5.73 dBi | 15.8 m |
Antenna (with Protected Resin) at 2.45 GHz | Reflection Coefficient (dB) | Realized Gain (dB) | Total Efficiency (%) |
---|---|---|---|
Antenna in air (A2) | −6.5 | 2.65 | 68.6% |
Antenna on wrist (A3) | −18.5 | −2.44 | 13.9% |
Bended antenna on wrist (A4) | −16.5 | −5.73 | 12.1% |
Material | Thickness | Characteristics | |
---|---|---|---|
Substrate | Kapton | 0.05 mm | Relative Permittivity: 3.3 Tan (δ): 0.004 @ 2.45 GHz |
Conductor | Copper | 0.0035 mm | Conductivity: 5.8 × 107 S/m |
Protect | Varnish | 0.0025 mm | Relative Permittivity: 4.3 Tan(δ): 0.03 |
Resin | Flexible Silicon | 3 mm below circuit 5 mm above circuit | Relative Permittivity: 2.8 Tan(δ): 0.0015 @ 1 MHz |
Parameter | Value (mm) | Parameter | Value (mm) | Parameter | Value (mm) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Wpatch | 24 | lf | 3 | wground | 24 |
Lpatch | 18 | lf2 | 3 | lground | 4.5 |
wl | 0.15 | yl | 8 |
Scenario | Consumption | |
---|---|---|
Static mode (A) | nRF52 configuration: OFF Mode BLE communication disabled All peripherals/GPIOs disabled | 760 µWh Pavg = 0.76 mW Pmax= 0.76 mW |
Dynamic mode (B,C) | nRF52 configuration: LP mode BLE communication enabled Sending connection request (advertising packets every 1 s) Sleep mode for internal sensors | 3.9 mWh Pmax = 52 mW |
Dynamic mode (D) | nRF52 configuration: LP mode BLE communication enabled Mode connected + notifications enabled Waiting sensor notification (L2CAP packets every 100 msec) Sleep mode for internal sensors | 4.1 mWh Pmax = 29 mW |
Dynamic mode (G) | nRF52 configuration: LP mode Mode connected + notifications enabled Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU): acquisition measures (accelerometer, gyrometer & quaternion) + sending data (20 bytes) at 10 Hz T&RH sensor: sleep mode Analog-to-Digital Converter: sleep mode | 42.8 mWh Pavg = 43 mW Pmax = 78 mW |
Dynamic mode (F) | nRF52 configuration: LP mode Mode connected + notifications enabled Accelerometer: sleep mode T&RH sensor: acquisition + sending data (4 bytes) at 1 Hz Analog-to-Digital Converter: sleep mode | 4.2 mWh Pavg = 4.2 mW Pmax = 29 mW |
Dynamic mode (E) | nRF52 configuration: LP mode Mode connected + notifications enabled Accelerometer: sleep mode T&RH sensor: sleep mode Analog-to-Digital Converter: acquisition + sending data (16 bytes) at 10 Hz | 6.7 mWh Pavg = 6.7 mW Pmax = 45 mW |
Name of Ink-Jet Formulation | Conductivity (mS·cm−1) | pH | Viscosity (CP) |
---|---|---|---|
PANI: PSS (EG/Tween 80%) | 2 | 4.0 | 8 |
PANI:PSS/SWCNT (PSS:Lacticacid:EG; Tween 80%) | 4.98 | 6.0 | 12 |
Sample Name | R (kΩ) | Sensitivity to NO2 | |
---|---|---|---|
Pristine graphene | ENEA 1 | 0.46 | 37% @ 300 ppb |
Pristine graphene | ENEA 2 | 0.4 | 31% @ 1 ppm |
Pristine graphene | ENEA 3 | 1.9 | 23% @ 1 ppm |
ZnO NP decorated graphene | ENEA 4 | 88 | 50% @ 1 ppm |
Multimeter Measures [Ω] | Platform Measures [Ω] | Error [%] | Value Converted by the ADC [V] | |
---|---|---|---|---|
ENEA2 | 593 | 598 | 0.8% | 145 |
ENEA3 | 1984 | 2009 | 1.26% | 477 |
Multimeter Measurements [kΩ] | Base Resistance Not Connected to Platform [kΩ] | Base Resistance Connected to Platform [kΩ] | Conductance Variation Not Connected | Conductance Variation Connected | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Pristine graphene | 90 | 99 | 91 | 25% | 31% |
G-ZnO | 82 | 79 | 90 | 58% | 63% |
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Saoutieff, E.; Polichetti, T.; Jouanet, L.; Faucon, A.; Vidal, A.; Pereira, A.; Boisseau, S.; Ernst, T.; Miglietta, M.L.; Alfano, B.; et al. A Wearable Low-Power Sensing Platform for Environmental and Health Monitoring: The Convergence Project. Sensors 2021, 21, 1802. https://doi.org/10.3390/s21051802
Saoutieff E, Polichetti T, Jouanet L, Faucon A, Vidal A, Pereira A, Boisseau S, Ernst T, Miglietta ML, Alfano B, et al. A Wearable Low-Power Sensing Platform for Environmental and Health Monitoring: The Convergence Project. Sensors. 2021; 21(5):1802. https://doi.org/10.3390/s21051802
Chicago/Turabian StyleSaoutieff, Elise, Tiziana Polichetti, Laurent Jouanet, Adrien Faucon, Audrey Vidal, Alexandre Pereira, Sébastien Boisseau, Thomas Ernst, Maria Lucia Miglietta, Brigida Alfano, and et al. 2021. "A Wearable Low-Power Sensing Platform for Environmental and Health Monitoring: The Convergence Project" Sensors 21, no. 5: 1802. https://doi.org/10.3390/s21051802