Wireless Communication Module Research Articles

Improving the Performance of Paper-Based Dipole Antennas by Electromagnetic Flux Concentration.

One of the essential issues in modern advanced materials science is to design and manufacture flexible devices, in particular in the framework of the Internet of Things (IoT), to improve integration into applications. An antenna is an essential component of wireless communication modules and, in addition to flexibility, compact dimensions, printability, low cost, and environmentally friendlier production strategies, also represent relevant functional challenges. Concerning the antenna's performance, the optimization of the reflection coefficient and maximum range remain the key goals. In this context, this work reports on screen-printed paper@Ag-based antennas and optimizes their functional properties, with improvements in the reflection coefficient (S11) from -8 to -56 dB and maximum transmission range from 208 to 256 m, with the introduction of a PVA-Fe3O4@Ag magnetoactive layer into the antenna's structure. The incorporated magnetic nanostructures allow the optimization of the functional features of antennas with possible applications ranging from broadband arrays to portable wireless devices. In parallel, the use of printing technologies and sustainable materials represents a step toward more sustainable electronics.

Power Autonomy and Agility Control of an Untethered Insect-Scale Soft Robot.

It is still challenging to achieve agility and trajectory control for untethered soft robots on an insect scale given their low mechanical impedance and compact structures. In this study, fast translational movements and swift turning motions are demonstrated on a power autonomous soft robot with a piezoelectric-thin-film-actuated body and electrostatic turning footpads. A high relative running speed of 2.5 body length per second compared with existing untethered robots is realized on a 24-mm-long untethered prototype integrated with power source, control, and wireless communication modules. An arc-shaped leg structure is adopted to self-regulate the frication forces on different footpads during turning by an inclination-induced redistribution of the payload gravity on legs and footpads. The trajectory maneuverability is demonstrated by navigating a 380 mg robot prototype with an 1810 mg payload to pass through a 58-cm-long S-shaped path with wireless control in 43.4 s. Due to the flexibility of the all-polymer body structure, the robustness of the untethered robot to large strain is demonstrated when compressed by 91 times the weight of the robot. A maximum travel distance of 58.6 m is achieved for the robot equipped with a 40 mA·h lithium battery, corresponding to the cost of transport of 261. This work provides a feasible solution to achieve high agility and advance the practicability of untethered soft robots on an insect scale.

Skin-Interfaced Superhydrophobic Insensible Sweat Sensors for Evaluating Body Thermoregulation and Skin Barrier Functions.

Monitoring sweat rate is vital for estimating sweat loss and accurately measuring biomarkers of interest. Although various optical or electrical sensors have been developed to monitor the sensible sweat rate, the quantification of the insensible sweat rate that is directly related to body thermoregulation and skin barrier functions still remains a challenge. This work introduces a superhydrophobic sweat sensor based on a polyacrylate sodium/MXene composite sandwiched between two superhydrophobic textile layers to continuously measure sweat vapor from insensible sweat with high sensitivity and rapid response. The superhydrophobic textile on a holey thin substrate with reduced stiffness and excellent breathability allows the permeation of sweat vapor, while preventing the sensor from being affected by the external water droplets and internal sensible sweat. Integrating the insensible sweat sensor with a flexible wireless communication and powering module further yields a standalone sensing system to continuously monitor insensible sweat rates at different body locations for diverse application scenarios. Proof-of-concept demonstrations on human subjects showcase the feasibility to continuously evaluate the body's thermoregulation and skin barrier functions for the assessment of thermal comfort, disease conditions, and nervous system activity. The results presented in this work also provide a low-cost device platform to detect other health-relevant biomarkers in the sweat (vapor) as the next-generation sweat sensor for smart healthcare and personalized medicine.

A Reciprocal Charging Mechanism for Electric Vehicular Networks in Charging-Station-Absent Zones

The electric vehicles (EVs), as promising components of sustainable and eco-friendly transportation systems, are being widely adopted to reduce the consumption of fossil fuel and the pollution of environments. EVs are usually equipped with wireless communication modules to support the vehicle to vehicle (V2V) communications, and thus an electric vehicular network (EVN) is constituted. However, the electric energy of EVs is extremely limited, and some EVs are possible to exhaust their electric energy before reaching the destinations. More seriously, when the EVs travel into the zones without any charging stations, they cannot be timely charged. With the rapid developments of wireless charging technologies (such as magnetic resonance) and graphene supercapacitor technologies, the reciprocal charges between EVs become feasible, i.e., the EVs with insufficient energy (IEVs) can be charged by the EVs with surplus energy (SEVs). In this paper, the strategies of selecting the local-optimal SEVs for IEVs and rescheduling their travel routes are investigated, and a distributed Reciprocal Charging Mechanism (RCM) is proposed. Both mechanism analysis and simulation results demonstrate the performance superiority of RCM. Specifically, with the proposed reciprocal charging mechanism, IEVs can be charged by SEVs in a charging-station-absent zone, and the electric energy consumption can be approximatively minimized.

A User-Friendly and Economical Six-Axis Force/Torque Sensor With Wireless Communication for Force Control and Monitoring

Six-axis force/torque (F/T) sensors have been actively developed owing to the increasing demand for force control and monitoring in many engineering applications. However, these sensors are expensive and complicated to use, particularly the wireless ones. This study presents a user-friendly and economical wireless six-axis F/T sensor for force control and monitoring applications. A newly designed elastic structure was used to overcome the reliability degradation and high machining cost problems of the elastic structures developed in our previous study. T-shaped structures were arranged symmetrically around the upper and lower parts, reducing the manufacturing cost. The electrical and electronic circuits for economical analog/digital signal processing, including zero calibration, were developed based on cheap microcontrollers. A user-friendly embedded wireless communication module was programmed at a low machine level for fast force control and monitoring. Additionally, we implemented a universal serial bus (USB)-wired F/T sensor similar to the wireless unit, except for wired communication. The effectiveness of the proposed F/T sensor was demonstrated by experimental tests and comparison with a commercial F/T sensor.

Real-Time Adjustment of Impulse Stimulation Parameters Using a Closed-Loop Deep Brain Stimulation System

The closed-loop deep brain stimulation system is a new research that provides real-time adjustment of impulse stimulation parameters. This system belongs to the implantation medical equipment technical field, which is designed for gathering physiological signals of patients. It includes a host computer that displays data in real-time, data storage, design optimization algorithms, and renewal embedded programs. The system has two modes of operation: one is where the embedded nerve stimulator carries out the formation closed-loop control of Embedded algorithm processing data, and the other is where the data collection reaches the host computer by wireless communication module. The stimulation parameter is controlled by the wireless communication module after host computer algorithm process, forming a closed loop. This research aimed to investigate the feasibility of using the closed-loop deep brain stimulation system for electronic stimulation of the nervous system disease and its potential for clinical research or zooscopy for closed-loop stimulation methods. The study provides a good platform for the research of closed-loop stimulation methods.

Environmental Temperature and Humidity Monitoring at Agricultural Farms using Internet of Things & DHT22-Sensor

Many monitoring systems have been designed and tested by researchers for monitoring environment temperature and humidity for different industrial applications and smart homes using DHT22 or DHT11 with Arduino Uno and wireless communication module. DHT22 is found to have better specifications in terms of performance and accuracy for measuring both temperature and humidity compared to DHT11. Arduino UNO is a microcontroller commonly used in scientific research. There are other more powerful microcontrollers available in the market. We chose ESP32 as its CPU is more powerful and can run upto 240 MHz, whereas Arduino UNO can run upto 16 MHz. In terms of connectivity, there is no Wi-Fi or Bluetooth functionality built in Arduino board, whereas ESP-32 has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth functions built in, which makes it more suitable for IoT projects. This paper aims at using Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) Technology to monitor environmental temperature and humidity at the agricultural farm remotely, using DHT22 in conjunction with TTGO T-Beam as it has an ESP32 development board and also includes a GPRS module. ESP32 can be connected to the internet using Wi-Fi. The sensor connected to the T-Beam sends data to the Cloud through the internet. In this experiment, we used the Firebase platform to save data in the database. This information can also be received on the serial monitor as well as on smartphones and Web/App by the concerned personnel. The T-Beam module is a reliable module for data communication and covers up to 15Kms range. The LoRaWAN is used as a gateway to connect devices wirelessly to the internet and manages communication between end nodes. The buzzer is set to turn on for temperature ≥ 32 ℃ and humidity ≤ 60%. The system is designed for monitoring environmental temperature and humidity at agricultural farms it can also be used in other applications like smart homes, industries to control temperature/humidity, poultry farms and environment monitoring in specific locations/areas.

Design of Monitoring System Temperature And Humidity Using DHT22 Sensor and NRF24L01 Based on Arduino

The monitoring system is used for know or get an information on a situation or condition in a certain place or area, with various methods used, so that many monitoring systems are developed and applied to assist human tasks in carrying out monitoring. The hardware design consists of 2 nodes namely the base node and the client node. At the base node there are 2 hardware components used, namely: Arduino Uno and the wireless communication module nRF24L01. The use of the NRF24L01 module is a reliable data communication module so that the data received is in accordance with the data sent by testing the module in different rooms and the same range with a distance of ± 800 m. Buzzer works well with temperature performance results ≥ 32 °C buzzer on and with ≤ 65% humidity buzzer on. The sensor network system can run well, because the ratio of the DHT22 sensor with the thermohygro, the average error is 1.4% for temperature and 3.8% for humidity from the results of data collection.

Design of Online Vitals Monitor by Integrating Big Data and IoT

In this work, we design a multisensory IoT-based online vitals monitor (hereinafter referred to as the VITALS) to sense four bedside physiological parameters including pulse (heart) rate, body temperature, blood pressure, and peripheral oxygen saturation. Then, the proposed system constantly transfers these signals to the analytics system which aids in enhancing diagnostics at an earlier stage as well as monitoring after recovery. The core hardware of the VITALS includes commercial off-the-shelf sensing devices/medical equipment, a powerful microcontroller, a reliable wireless communication module, and a big data analytics system. It extracts human vital signs in a pre-programmed interval of 30 min and sends them to big data analytics system through the WiFi module for further analysis. We use Apache Kafka (to gather live data streams from connected sensors), Apache Spark (to categorize the patient vitals and notify the medical professionals while identifying abnormalities in physiological parameters), Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) (to archive data streams for further analysis and long-term storage), Spark SQL, Hive and Matplotlib (to support caregivers to access/visualize appropriate information from collected data streams and to explore/understand the health status of the individuals). In addition, we develop a mobile application to send statistical graphs to doctors and patients to enable them to monitor health conditions remotely. Our proposed system is implemented on three patients for 7 days to check the effectiveness of sensing, data processing, and data transmission mechanisms. To validate the system accuracy, we compare the data values collected from established sensors with the measured readouts using a commercial healthcare monitor, the Welch Allyn® Spot Check. Our proposed system provides improved care solutions, especially for those whose access to care services is limited.

A Wearable-Sensor System with AI Technology for Real-Time Biomechanical Feedback Training in Hammer Throw.

Developing real-time biomechanical feedback systems for in-field applications will transfer human motor skills' learning/training from subjective (experience-based) to objective (science-based). The translation will greatly improve the efficiency of human motor skills' learning and training. Such a translation is especially indispensable for the hammer-throw training which still relies on coaches' experience/observation and has not seen a new world record since 1986. Therefore, we developed a wearable wireless sensor system combining with artificial intelligence for real-time biomechanical feedback training in hammer throw. A framework was devised for developing such practical wearable systems. A printed circuit board was designed to miniaturize the size of the wearable device, where an Arduino microcontroller, an XBee wireless communication module, an embedded load cell and two micro inertial measurement units (IMUs) could be inserted/connected onto the board. The load cell was for measuring the wire tension, while the two IMUs were for determining the vertical displacements of the wrists and the hip. After calibration, the device returned a mean relative error of 0.87% for the load cell and the accuracy of 6% for the IMUs. Further, two deep neural network models were built to estimate selected joint angles of upper and lower limbs related to limb coordination based on the IMUs' measurements. The estimation errors for both models were within an acceptable range, i.e., approximately ±12° and ±4°, respectively, demonstrating strong correlation existed between the limb coordination and the IMUs' measurements. The results of the current study suggest a remarkable novelty: the difficulty-to-measure human motor skills, especially in those sports involving high speed and complex motor skills, can be tracked by wearable sensors with neglect movement constraints to the athletes. Therefore, the application of artificial intelligence in a wearable system has shown great potential of establishing real-time biomechanical feedback training in various sports. To our best knowledge, this is the first practical research of combing wearables and machine learning to provide biomechanical feedback in hammer throw. Hopefully, more wearable biomechanical feedback systems integrating artificial intelligence would be developed in the future.

Research on the Application of Wireless Sensor in the Design of Curtain Automatic Adjustment System

With the development of science and technology and the progress of wireless sensor network technology, a variety of intelligent electronic products are used more and more widely in people's lives. High technology and intelligent technology have entered residential home users from intelligent buildings, and home intelligent technology has become a cutting-edge technology topic. The development of mobile Internet provides a new platform for home decoration, which is of great significance in promoting the formation of smart families and smart communities. Curtain is an important element in interior decoration design. It is of great practical value to develop a mobile virtual display system that can manage curtains and provide curtain decoration effects. The design idea of modularization is adopted, and the design process of wireless communication module, relay module, key module, power protection and level conversion module of the system is emphatically analyzed. The basic working principle and operation method of the system are introduced, and the server and client software based on TCP communication protocol are designed to realize the remote control of curtains through the Internet or personal mobile devices. The actual results show that the scheme can be applied to the home or office environment, and has the characteristics of high stability and simple operation.

Continuous and Real-Time Measurement of Plant Water Potential Using an AAO-Based Capacitive Humidity Sensor for Irrigation Control

Water potential measurement is an essential factor in determining water consumption management and recycling in the agricultural field. We report the development of a continuous water potential measurement system using sensors for water stress analysis in tomato plants with better irrigation plan feedback. The water potential sensor uses the capacitive sensing principle which measures humidity inside an anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) layer. An analog to digital converter with a wireless communication module system records the capacitance data of the sensing system. Calibration data of sensors derived from superabsorbent polymer (SP) and deionized water (DIW) mixtures can represent their water potential value. The method showed good matching of capacitance and water potential values above −7 MPa, matching the result obtained in tomato stem. The measurements were conducted for a few days with the sap flow and water potential sensors connected in series on a tomato stem. When sunlight is sufficient, sap flow increases; meanwhile, water potential decreases. The opposite phenomenon could be observed during the nighttime. With irrigation restricting conditions, both sap flow and water potential signal decrease, triggering the emergency watering signals. This continuous water potential sensing system can quantitatively monitor the plant stem’s water stress and set irrigation schedules to achieve high-quality products in the agricultural field.

Three‐in‐One Portable Electronic Sensory System Based on Low‐Impedance Laser‐Induced Graphene On‐Skin Electrode Sensors for Electrophysiological Signal Monitoring

AbstractOn‐skin sensors can precisely perceive important electrophysiological signals, including electroencephalogram (EEG), electrocardiogram (ECG), and electromyogram (EMG). Despite significant advances in the development of soft materials as electrode sensors, data acquisition (DAQ) unit—another indispensable component of on‐skin electronic sensory systems—typically exhibits bulkiness or unimodal sensing, which is detrimental to the portability of the sensory system or the comprehensiveness of the perceived information. Here, a portable and multimodal DAQ unit to tackle these challenges is designed. By assembling the DAQ unit with low‐impedance (<100 Ω) laser‐induced graphene on‐skin electrode sensors, a wireless communication module, a power supply module, and a 3D printed protective shell, the completed sensory system can realize three‐in‐one monitoring of EEG, ECG, and EMG with a light weight of 22 g and a low cost of $25. Moreover, a mobile App is developed to display the perceived electrophysiological signals in real time. Human–machine interface and embedded machine learning are demonstrated using the designed sensory system, indicating its potential applications in artificial intelligence. The success of this inexpensive three‐in‐one portable electronic sensory system sheds light on design, fabrication, and commercialization of multifunctional wearable electronics with wide applications in fitness tracking, medical diagnostics, and human–machine interface.

Design of a small material handling robot gripping and storage system

This paper completed the development status and working principle of the handling robot, analyzed the performance index parameters and system functional requirements of the robot, and proposed an overall design scheme of the handling robot control system. The mechanical structure design of the handling robot was developed, and the selection of the core components of the system was studied and designed in detail based on theoretical analysis and calculation. Secondly, this paper selected the STM32 microcontroller as the core of the handling robot. It completed the circuit schematic diagram of the systems, and investigated the selection of core sensors for the navigation and positioning module, obstacle avoidance module, and wireless communication module. Finally, this paper studied the automatic control part of the handling robot, which mainly included the modeling of the robot’s manipulator, PID control, and MATLAB simulation verification. In addition, the application prospect of the handling robot was explored. It had the advantages of high efficiency, strong practicability, and perfect function, and had certain practical significance in the application of the logistics industry.

Design and Experiment for Inter-Vehicle Communication Based on Dead-Reckoning and Delay Compensation in a Cooperative Harvester and Transport System

To achieve high-frequency and effective inter-vehicle communication between harvesters and transport vehicles during cooperative harvesting, a protocol for wireless communication was designed by analyzing actual communication requirements. Two different wireless communication modes (radio and 4G) were selected for the hardware design; then, a Kalman Filter was designed based on real-time Dead-reckoning and inter-vehicle Communication data after delay Compensation (KFDCC). Finally, the relative longitudinal deviation between two vehicles was obtained and updated steadily at a 10 Hz frequency. By using the relative longitudinal deviation of two vehicles, calculated after aligning the UTC stamp with the local GNSS data from the harvester and transport vehicle as a comparative metric, accuracy evaluation experiments were conducted regarding radio and 4G. The maximum absolute errors of the KFDCC output value were 0.03783 and 0.07381 m, respectively, and the mean square errors were 0.00392 and 0.01317 m, respectively. Compared with systems without the KFDCC method, the mean square errors were reduced by 88.76% and 90.60%, respectively. The KFDCC method can also effectively solve the problems of data delay, packet loss, blockage, error, and so on, in wireless communication, and has short-time breakpoint endurance capabilities. Field experiments showed that the proposed method can provide accurate data support for the dynamic alignment and unloading processes of harvesters and transport vehicles, and it can also provide algorithmic support for real-time communication data fusion between different wireless communication modes. Overall, the inter-vehicle communication mode and data-processing method designed in this paper have good effects and adaptability, and they can guarantee that the whole process of autonomous harvesting operates properly.

Carbon nanotube-based flexible high-speed circuits with sub-nanosecond stage delays

High-speed flexible circuits are required in flexible systems to realize real-time information analysis or to construct wireless communication modules for emerging applications. Here, we present scaled carbon nanotube-based thin film transistors (CNT-TFTs) with channel lengths down to 450 nm on 2-μm-thick parylene substrates, achieving state-of-the-art performances of high on-state current (187.6 μA μm−1) and large transconductance (123.3 μS μm−1). Scaling behavior analyses reveal that the enhanced performance introduced by scaling is attributed to channel resistance reduction while the contact resistance (180 ± 50 kΩ per tube) remains unchanged, which is comparable to that achieved in devices on rigid substrates, indicating great potential in ultimate scaled flexible CNT-TFTs with high performance comparable to their counterparts on rigid substrates where contact resistance dominates the performance. Five-stage flexible ring oscillators are built to benchmark the speed of scaled devices, demonstrating a 281 ps stage delay at a low supply voltage of 2.6 V.

Electronically powered drug delivery devices: considerations and challenges

ABSTRACT Introduction Electronically powered drug delivery devices enable a controlled drug release route for a more convenient and painless way with reduced side effects. The current advances in microfabrication and microelectronics have facilitated miniaturization and intelligence with the integration of sensors and wireless communication modules. These devices have become an essential component of commercialized on-demand drug delivery. Areas covered This review aims to provide a concise overview of current progress in electronically powered drug devices, focusing on delivery strategies, manufacturing techniques, and control circuit design with specific examples. Expert opinion The application of electronically powered drug delivery systems is now considered a feasible therapeutic approach with improved drug release efficiency and increased patient comfort. It is anticipated that these technologies will gradually fulfill clinical needs and resolve commercialization challenges in the future. This review discusses the current advances in electronic drug delivery devices, especially focusing on designing strategies to achieve an effective drug release, as well as the perspectives and challenges for future applications in clinical therapy.

Smart home design based on Alibaba Cloud

With the continuous progress of science and technology, the pace of social informatization is also accelerating, people's demand for a safe, comfortable and controllable intelligent home environment is growing. In this paper, we design a iot based on ali cloud platform control system of smart home solutions, choose stm32 microcontroller as the main control unit, ali as a hardware device, a time server and related sensors for home fire alarm, intelligent entrance guard, infrared detection, temperature and humidity detection display, light intensity, and other functions. The ESP8266 module is used as the wireless communication module to realize the data communication between hardware and software. A WeChat small program is designed as the upper computer of the user terminal to realize the intelligent management of the user terminal for home. Users can check the running status of related devices at home at any time in the WeChat mini program, such as temperature and humidity, smoke status, and whether someone has invaded.

Janus and Heteromodulus Elastomeric Fiber Mats Feature Regulable Stress Redistribution for Boosted Strain Sensing Performance.

Wearable strain sensors have huge potential for applications in healthcare, human-machine interfacing, and augmented reality systems. However, the nonlinear response of the resistance signal to strain has caused considerable difficulty and complexity in data processing and signal transformation, thus impeding their practical applications severely. Herein, we propose a simple way to achieve linear and reproducible resistive signals responding to strain in a relatively wide strain range for flexible strain sensors, which is achieved via the fabrication of Janus and heteromodulus elastomeric fiber mats with micropatterns using microimprinting second processing technology. In detail, both isotropic and anisotropic fiber mats can turn into Janus fiber mats with periodical and heteromodulus micropatterns via controlling the fiber fusion and the diffusion of local macromolecular chains of thermoplastic elastomers. The Janus heterogeneous microstructure allows for stress redistribution upon stretching, thus leading to lower strain hysteresis and improved linearity of resistive signal. Moreover, tunable sensing performance can be achieved by tailoring the size of the micropatterns on the fiber mat surface and the fiber anisotropy. The Janus mat strain sensors with high signal linearity and good reproducibility have a very low strain detection limit, enabling potential applications in human-machine interfacing and intelligent control fields if combined with a wireless communication module.

Process Optimization and Die Design of Hydromechanical Calendering Based on Wireless Network Communication and IoT

Aiming at the problem of the study, of high error probability in the practical application of traditional hydromechanical calendering process, the hydromechanical calendering process is optimized based on wireless network communication. GPRS or LORaipot-IOT wireless communication mode is adopted to calculate the impact kinetic energy of hydromechanical calendering, and the simulation model of hydromechanical calendering is built based on AMESim. The characteristics of hydromechanical calendering are analyzed. The oil pressure is controlled by setting the pressure adjusting valve and adjusting the spring pressure to realize the optimization of the hydromechanical calendering process. On this basis, the grinding tool is designed, and the clearance between punch and die is reserved to prevent the blank from cracking. The experimental results show that the error probability of hydromechanical calendering with the optimized design process is significantly lower than that of the control group, which can solve the problem of high error probability of traditional hydromechanical calendering process in practical application and meet the application requirements. Conclusions. Hydraulic mechanical calendering may be used to calendar different plastic materials, with a blank thickness of 0.5-3 mm, according to the technology’s operating principle, test production, and foreign data. Thicker sheets may be calendered with adequate hydraulic pressure. For the form of parts, the optimum effect is that the projectile, cone, etc. section vary from small too big. For the section does not change or smaller parts also have an impact? Some pieces with an interior concave shape and bottom and side stiffeners are difficult to the calendar. Hydromechanical calendering technologies make it easier to create these pieces.