Abstract
Numerous wearable sensors have been developed for a variety of needs in medical/healthcare/wellness/sports applications, but there are still doubts about their usefulness due to uncomfortable fit or frequent battery charging. Because the size or capacity of battery is the major factor affecting the convenience of wearable sensors, power consumption must be reduced. We developed a method that can significantly reduce the power consumption by introducing a signal repeater and a special switch that provides power only when needed. Antenna radiation characteristics are an important factor in wireless wearable sensors, but soft material encapsulation for comfortable fit results in poor wireless performance. We improved the antenna radiation characteristics by a local encapsulation patterning. In particular, ultra-low power operation enables the use of paper battery to achieve a very thin and flexible form factor. Also, we verified the human body safety through specific absorption rate simulations. With these methods, we demonstrated a wearable infant sleep position sensor. Infants are unable to call for help in unsafe situations, and it is not easy for caregivers to observe them all the time. Our wearable sensor detects infants’ sleep positions in real time and automatically alerts the caregivers when needed.
Highlights
A variety of wearable sensors have been developed and attracted much attention in medical/healthcare/wellness/sports applications [1,2,3]
We developed a method for reducing the power consumption and improving the antenna radiation characteristics for a wearable sensor and utilized these technologies to monitor infant sleep position
We present a wearable sensor that can monitor the infant sleep position, solving the conventional problems associated with power consumption and the antenna radiation characteristics
Summary
A variety of wearable sensors have been developed and attracted much attention in medical/healthcare/wellness/sports applications [1,2,3]. Most previous wearable sensors have critical drawbacks in terms of user convenience because of significant power consumption with various functionalities, large battery volume, rigid/bulky form factors, and frequent charging cycles [10,11,12]. People sustained efforts to develop self-powered wearable sensors using piezoelectric/triboelectric materials and solar cells [13,14,15]. They did not generate enough power to operate the sensors, and an additional power source was required. Several studies used a low-power simple chip to reduce the power, but this approach still required large-capacity battery and frequent charging cycle [16,17].
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