Wireless Manner Research Articles

Performance ANd ACcuracy in Electrical BioActivity Recordings (PANACEA): A high-performance, wireless, multi-instrument for potentiometric and amperometric recording of biosignals

This paper presents the design, testing and quantitative evaluation of a high-performance, low-power, portable multi-instrument (107×79mm2), capable of recording important biosignals accurately and in real-time. This highly versatile system has the ability to transmit the captured bio-data back to the user either in a wired (HDMI cable) or wireless (ZigBee protocol) manner, depending on the targeted application. The biological information that can be recorded by the proposed instrument spans a wide range of bio-potentials and bio-amperometric signals. The proposed instrument is split into two complementary “sub-instruments”, where one is operating as the front-end device, responsible for the accurate, low-noise signal detection and transmission, while the second “sub-instrument” is operating as the “base station”, responsible for the collection and further processing of the captured data. For wired transmission (e.g to the user’s PC) the front end module can operate independently, however, for wireless transmission both “sub-instruments” are required (transmitter-base station architecture). For wireless transmission, each of the two “sub-instruments” is equipped with dedicated 2 Mbps ZigBee radio transceivers and both parts are controlled by a small area embedded FPGA module. The front-end device features two distinct sections: (a) a current/voltage to voltage section comprising six potentiometry and two transimpedance amplifier-based amperometry channels. These eight in total analogue channels are converted into digital form by means of a 24 bit, voltage input, Analogue-to-Digital Converter (ADC) and (b) a four channel, commercially available switched-capacitor-based ADC Integrated Circuit (IC), which converts input charge to digital data with 16 or 20 bit resolution at 3.125 kSPS. The paper presents a plethora of measured wired and wireless experimental results, corresponding to most well-known biomedical and other biological/physical signals including: EEG, ECoG, EMG, ECG, PPG, intracardiac atrial fibrillation (AF) signals, cell media/tissue biopotential, drosophila H1-cell spiking signals and pH sensing using commercially available electrodes. The portable/wearable poly-instrument is suitable for Intensive Care Unit (ICU), High Dependancy Unit (HDU) as well as home monitoring.

38Leadless cardiac dual-chamber pacing

Background: Recently introduced leadless cardiac pacemakers effectively overcome all lead-related limitations of conventional pacemaker systems. However, these devices only feature single-chamber pacing capability although dual-chamber pacing is highly desirable due to physiologic reasons. Implanting a leadless pacemaker into the right atrium and a second one into the right ventricle would enable leadless dual chamber pacing but requires wireless communication for device synchronization. Conventional radiofrequency telemetry is not suitable for this purpose due to its high energy consumption. Thus, an ultra-low power wireless communication method is crucial to preserve the pacemaker’s longevity (modern pacemakers consume only 5-10 µW of power). Purpose: Dual-chamber pacing capability for leadless pacemakers. Methods: Two pacemakers were developed that feature bidirectional wireless communication. Intra-body communication was implemented as communication method. This method uses the electrical conductivity of blood and tissue: the data from one device is modulated and applied as a small alternating current signal to the myocardial tissue and blood via electrodes. The signal is registered almost simultaneously by the other device. The communication frequency is ~100 kHz and therefore does not influence the heart’s functioning. The pacemakers feature an electrode pair for bipolar stimulation, the communication is performed over the same electrodes. The pacemakers were tested in an acute in-vivo trial on a 60 kg domestic pig. One pacemaker paced the right atrium, the other one the right ventricle. The atrial pacemaker served as master device and dictated the actual pacing rate, the atrioventricular (AV) pacing delay and pacing activity to the ventricular pacemaker in a wireless manner. Results: The pacemakers successfully performed dual-chamber pacing (D00) with wireless intra-body communication using the myocardium and blood as transmission path. No interference with the cardiac function was observed. The ECG sequence in Figure 1 shows the onset of leadless dual-chamber pacing recorded during the in-vivo trial: the atrial (A) and ventricular (V) pacing spikes are indicated by the arrows. The pacing rate was set to 120 bpm and the AV delay to 50 ms. Less than 1 µW average power was applied to the tissue for wireless communication. Conclusion: To our knowledge, this is the first report on successful leadless dual-chamber pacing during an in-vivo trial. Intra-body communication was integrated into a pacemaker system and has proven to be a promising, power-efficient wireless communication method for leadless dual-chamber pacemakers.

Integrated Data and Energy Communication Network: A Comprehensive Survey

In order to satisfy the power thirst of communication devices in the imminent fifth generation era, wireless charging techniques have attracted much attention both from the academic and industrial communities. Although the inductive coupling and magnetic resonance-based charging techniques are indeed capable of supplying energy in a wireless manner, they tend to restrict the freedom of movement. By contrast, radio frequency (RF) signals are capable of supplying energy over distances, which are gradually inclining closer to our ultimate goal-charging anytime and anywhere. Furthermore, transmitters capable of emitting RF signals have been widely deployed, such as TV towers, cellular base stations, and Wi-Fi access points. This communication infrastructure may indeed be employed also for wireless energy transfer (WET). Therefore, no extra investment in dedicated WET infrastructure is required. However, allowing RF signal-based WET may impair the wireless information transfer (WIT) operating in the same spectrum. Hence, it is crucial to coordinate and balance WET and WIT for simultaneous wireless information and power transfer, which evolves to integrated data and energy communication networks (IDENs). To this end, a ubiquitous IDEN architecture is introduced by summarizing its natural heterogeneity and by synthesizing a diverse range of integrated WET and WIT scenarios. Then the inherent relationship between WET and WIT is revealed from an information theoretical perspective, which is followed by the critical appraisal of the hardware enabling techniques extracting energy from RF signals. Furthermore, the transceiver design, resource allocation, and user scheduling as well as networking aspects are elaborated on. In a nutshell, this treatise can be used as a handbook for researchers and engineers, who are interested in enriching their knowledge base of IDENs and in putting this vision into practice.

LAB: Lightweight Adaptive Broadcast Control in DSRC Vehicular Networks

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is the use of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies in manufacturing. The vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) are a typical application of IIoT. Benefiting from Dedicated Short‐Range Communication (DSRC) technology, vehicles can communicate with each other through wireless manner. Therefore, road safety is able to be greatly improved by the broadcast of safety messages, which contain vehicle’s real‐time speed, position, direction, etc. In existing DSRC, safety messages are broadcasted at a fixed frequency by default. However, traffic conditions are dynamic. In this way, there are too many transmission collisions when vehicles are too dense and the wireless channel is underused when vehicles are too sparse. In this paper, we address broadcast congestion issue in DSRC and propose lightweight adaptive broadcast (LAB) control for DSRC safety message. The objectives of LAB are to make full use of DSRC channel and avoid congestion. LAB meets two key challenges. First, it is hard to adopt a centralized method to control the communication parameters of distributed vehicles. Furthermore, the vehicle cannot easily acquire the channel conditions of other vehicles. To overcome these challenges, channel condition is attached with safety messages in LAB and broadcast frequency is adapted according to neighboring vehicles’ channel conditions. To evaluate the performance of LAB, we conduct extensive simulations on different roads and different vehicle densities. Performance results demonstrate that LAB effectively adjusts the broadcast frequency and controls the congestion.

Bipolar Electrochemistry with Organic Single Crystals for Wireless Synthesis of Metal–Organic Janus Objects and Asymmetric Photovoltage Generation

Bipolar electrochemistry has recently emerged as a very unique method to address conducting particles in a wireless manner. The technique is often applied to the fabrication of Janus particles; however the chemical nature of the bipolar electrode has been essentially limited to carbon- or metal-based materials. Here, we report for the first time the use of conducting organic single crystals as bipolar electrodes for the preparation of a new generation of Janus objects. Fabre and Bechgaard salts involving respectively tetrathia- and tetraselenafulvalene were selected for proof-of-concept experiments. Such an approach allows to preserve the integrity of these fragile substrates because it necessitates neither electronic wiring nor mechanical contact. The site-selective electrodeposition of copper is successfully achieved, leading thus to a new metal–organic Janus structure. Subsequently, asymmetric generation of photovoltage under illumination is achieved due to the anisotropic presence of copper, making th...

Joint beamforming and cooperative jamming for secure transmission in multi-antenna decode-and-forward relaying sensor networks: A greedy switching strategy

In wireless sensor networks, sensor nodes are deployed to collect data and deliver the sensed information to a base station in a wireless manner. Due to the broadcast nature of wireless sensor communications, relay-sensor-based secure transmission remains a challenging issue. This article proposes a joint cooperative beamforming and jamming scheme in the relay wireless sensor networks, where the switching strategy from cooperative beamforming to cooperative jamming is applied to weaken the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio of the eavesdropper when the decoding threshold is not triggered. In particular, based on Charnes–Cooper transformation and S-procedure, semi-definite programming is constructed to solve the robust cooperative beamforming and jamming with a low implementation complexity, respectively. Additionally, we adopt the global power constraints in semi-definite programming to take full exploitation of the power at relay sensor. Finally, simulation results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed scheme in comparison with the traditional decode-and-forward robust scheme and the non-robust scheme.

Millimeter-Wave Wireless Communications for IoT-Cloud Supported Autonomous Vehicles: Overview, Design, and Challenges

Autonomous vehicles are a rising technology in the near future to provide a safe and efficient transportation experience. Vehicular communication systems are indispensable components in autonomous vehicles to share road conditions in a wireless manner. With the exponential increase of traffic data, conventional wireless technologies preliminarily show their incompetence because of limited bandwidth. This article explores the capability of millimeter-wave communications for autonomous vehicles. As the next-generation wireless technology, mmWave is advanced in its multi-gigabit transmittability and beamforming technique. Based on these features, we propose the novel design of a vehicular mmWave system combining the advantages of the Internet of Things and cloud computing. This mmWave system supports vehicles sharing multi-gigabit data about the surrounding environment and recognizing objects via the cloud in real time. Therefore, autonomous vehicles are able to determine the optimal driving strategy instantaneously.

A Detailed Protocol for Perspiration Monitoring Using a Novel, Small, Wireless Device.

Perspiration monitoring can be utilized for the detection of certain diseases, such as thermoregulation and mental disorders, particularly when the patients are unaware of such disorders or are having difficulty expressing their symptoms. Until now, several devices for perspiration monitoring have been developed; however, such devices tend to have a relatively large exterior, considerable power consumption, and/or less sensitivity. Recently, we developed a small, wireless device for perspiration monitoring. The device consists of a temperature/relative humidity (T/RH) sensor, battery-driven small data logger, and silica gel as a desiccant in a small cylindrical exterior. The T/RH sensor is placed between the detection windows (through which the water vapor from the skin enters) and the silica gel. The underlying principle of the perspiration monitoring device is based on Fick's law of diffusion, which means that water vapor flux from the skin to the silica gel (i.e.transepidermal water loss and perspiration) can be captured by change in humidity at the T/RH sensor. In addition, a baseline subtraction method was adopted to distinguish perspiration and transepidermal water loss. As shown in the previous report, the developed device can monitor the perspiration at any sites of the body in an easy, wireless manner. However, detailed methods of how to use the device have not been disclosed yet. In this article, therefore, we would like to show the point-by-point tutorials of how to use the device for perspiration monitoring, by showing the sympathetic activity test with the sympathetic skin response monitoring as an example.

Monitoring elbow isometric contraction by novel wearable fabric sensing device

Fabric-based wearable technology is highly desirable in sports, as it is light, flexible, soft, and comfortable with little interference to normal sport activities. It can provide accurate information on the in situ deformation of muscles in a continuous and wireless manner. During elbow flexion in isometric contraction, upper arm circumference increases with the contraction of elbow flexors, and it is possible to monitor the muscles’ contraction by limb circumferential strains. This paper presents a new wireless wearable anthropometric monitoring device made from fabric strain sensors for the human upper arm. The materials, structural design and calibration of the device are presented. Using an isokinetic testing system (Biodex3®) and the fabric monitoring device simultaneously, in situ measurements were carried out on elbow flexors in isometric contraction mode with ten subjects for a set of positions. Correlations between the measured values of limb circumferential strain and normalized torque were examined, and a linear relationship was found during isometric contraction. The average correlation coefficient between them is 0.938 ± 0.050. This wearable anthropometric device thus provides a useful index, the limb circumferential strain, for upper arm muscle contraction in isometric mode.

An EEG-Based BCI System to Facial Action Recognition

Brain---computer interface (BCI) has created a new era in neuroscience. It has improved the life quality of severely disabled patients. It allows them to regain the power of executing will by their cognitive, expressive and affective brain activities. An electroencephalogram (EEG)-based BCI system with wireless manner was developed to extract EEG signals with Emotiv EPOC head set for recognizing the facial actions in this paper. The extracted feature vectors of EEG can be reduced by the Wavelet transform. Then the reduced EEG signals can then be clearly classified into six clusters by means of support vector machine algorithm with Gaussian kernel function. The better correct rates can be obtained by one-order wavelet transform than those got by three-order wavelet transform. In order to get real-time manner to control an electronic system smoothly, the sampling data have to be reduced. If time consumption is considered, we can choice the one-order wavelet transform with 32 samples. The experimental results showed a promising correct rate for the facial-action recognition through the proposed BCI system with real-time manner.

An Automatic System Design for Orchard Irrigation Based on STM32 and Zigbee Technology

This study designs an intelligent system, which can achieve automatic irrigation for orchard by wireless manner. The system mainly includes a soil moisture monitor and control unit made up of a variety of sensors, a central control unit based on STM32F103 and the wireless sensor network based on Zigbee technology. First, the soil moisture monitor and control unit measures the real-time data such as humidity and sends the data to the central control unit by a wireless sensor network based on Zigbee technology. The central control unit sends a control command according to data received to the soil moisture monitor and control unit by the same communication way and sends the data about control command, humidity and etc. to the mobile devices over GSM the in the meantime. This is a high efficiency and energy saving system, which has clearly contributes to save labor, conserve more water and increase production of fruit.

A Survey on Applications of RFID Technology

Background/Objectives : Recent trends use Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology in day to day life. At the beginning RFID was developed to replace barcodes in supply chain. They are the ubiquitous tool available for monitoring any item in various fields. The main objective of this paper is to survey RFID technology based on its security and safety applications. Methods/Statistical Analysis : RFID technique is mainly used for the security, tracking and monitoring purposes. Findings: This paper presents a survey on the applications of RIFD in the tollgate transactions, bank locker security system, automatic vehicle speed control and library books security system. Many applications visualized have a genuine use. The communication is in the wireless manner and does not require line of sight. Applications/Improvement: This paper presents a survey on the applications of RIFD in the tollgate transactions, bank locker security system, automatic vehicle speed control and library books security system.

Design and implementation of an IoT multi-interface gateway for establishing a digital art interactive system

The internet of things IoTs can be established by connecting smart objects in a wireless manner. However, a variety of wireless technologies, including Bluetooth, ZigBee, WiFi and infrared, which have been embedded into smart objects or controllers, cannot exchange information since they apply different standards or even work on different frequencies. To provide information exchange in heterogeneous networks, this paper proposes the design and implementation of an IoT multi-interface gateway, which can transform the information into a data which can be recognised by various smart objects. In the implementation, the IoT multi-interface gateway can be used for digital arts or some smart spaces that can automatically control traditional TV, air condition, smart meter, sphygmomanometer, smart phone, etc. The implementation shows that the IoT gateway can exchange data among various smart objects that use different wireless technologies and also guarantee the stability of data conversion time.

Double remote electrochemical addressing and optical readout of electrochemiluminescence at the tip of an optical fiber.

In this work, we report an original strategy for the wireless electrochemical generation of light at the tip of an optical fiber bundle, coupled with a simultaneous remote readout. An optical fiber bundle coated with a nanometer-thin gold film acts as a dual platform, on the one hand to locally generate electrochemiluminescence (ECL) in a wireless manner by bipolar electrochemistry, and on the other hand to guide the resulting ECL signal. The light emission is triggered and collected at one end, transmitted by the waveguide and remotely detected at the opposite end. Integration of both functionalities at the level of the same miniaturized object leads to an unprecedented bipolar opto-electrode, allowing one to quantify the ECL intensity as a function of different parameters in a double remote approach with interesting potential applications, ranging from high-throughput catalyst screening to massive parallel biochemical analysis.

A Wireless Load Sharing Strategy for Islanded Microgrid Based on Feeder Current Sensing

To solve the reactive power sharing issue in droop control application, many solutions have been developed based on the basic wireless manner. However, existing wireless methods cannot eliminate reactive power sharing errors effectively, especially in load change situations. In this paper, a wireless reactive power sharing method that employs feeder current sensing and adaptive virtual impedance control is proposed for islanded microgrid. To improve reactive power sharing accuracy of virtual impedance method, an equivalent feeder concept is introduced, which can reflect the mismatch in connecting circuits equivalently. Through fast feeder current sensing, distributed generation units can calculate their respective equivalent feeders in real time. With the cooperation between real-time calculation and virtual impedance control, the proposed method achieves both accurate and fast performance in reactive power sharing. Compared with communication-based methods, the proposed wireless control provides the same high accuracy in reactive power sharing; meanwhile, its response speed to load change is much faster than that of other methods. Moreover, the proposed method can work as normal even though load changes during the transient process. Matlab simulation and real-time digital simulator test are used to validate the feasibility of this method.

On the Design and Development of a Zigbee-Based Multimodal Input-Output Monitoring-Actuating System

The monitoring of a physically challenged patient’s activities is a crucial and difficult task for the medical professionals. The design and development of a multimodal- input and output wireless system with two sensors and three actuators that can be used for just monitoring or for both monitoring and stimulating are discussed in this research. Touch and tilt sensors at the input part of the system attached to Zigbee modules communicate in a wireless manner with voice, vibration and light actuators connected to Zigbee modules at the output part. The hardware and the software parts are designed and integrated in such a way that a new sensor at the input or a new actuator at the output can be included or excluded based on the needs of the patient. It is shown how to design and develop sensors. In an application programming interface communication mode, 3 XBee series 1 modules send and receive data in a wireless manner. The prototype of the system was tested with promising results in the case of the patients with inattention disorder. This system can be used for monitoring the activities of a patient and also for actuating certain stimulus in the patient side in case of necessity.

Implementing Remote Presence Using Quadcopter Control by a Non-Invasive BCI Device

Extracting neural signals to control a quadcopter using wireless manner is proposed in this paper for hands-free, silence and effortless human-mobile interaction with remote presence. The brain activity is recorded in real-time and discovered patterns to relate it to facial-expression states with a cheap off-the-shelf electroencephalogram (EEG) headset-Emotic Epoc device. A tablet based mobile framework with Android system is developed to convert these discovered patterns into commands to drive the quadcopter-AR Drone 2.0 through wireless interface. First, neural signals are sequentially extracted from headset and transmitted to the tablet mobile system. In the tablet mobile system, large number of feature vector of EEG can be reduced by using Principle Component Analysis (PCA) to recognize the facial expression to generate suitable commands and driving the quadcopter through wireless interface. Finally, the quadcopter can fly smoothly in accordance with the commands converted by the EEG signals. The experimental results show that the proposed system can easily control quadcopters.

Development of an Unmanned Combat Vehicle with its Training System

By using image processing and automatic control technologies, this study designs an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) that can be operated by various control devices, such as laptops and joysticks. A camera is set up on the UGV to capture the sight around it, and then can send the video to the back end system in a wireless manner. Besides, we design an attacking system that allows users to do the zeroing correction for shooting the target precisely. Moreover, a shooting training system is designed to improve the convenience for target practice. It not only can send the result to the back end system immediately but also can simulate the enemy movement to make the training more reality.

An IoT Multi-Interface Gateway for Building a Smart Space

Connecting smart objects in a wireless manner can establish an Internet of Things (IoT) smart space. However, a variety of wireless technologies have been embedded into smart objects that they cannot exchange information since they apply different standards. To provide information exchange in heterogeneous networks, this paper designs an IoT multi-interface gateway, which can be used in some smart spaces to automatically control traditional TV, air condition, smart meter, sphygmomanometer, smart phone, etc.

Autonomous Wearable Sensor Nodes With Flexible Energy Harvesting

Distributed wearable wireless sensors are widely employed in wireless body sensor network for various physiological monitoring purposes like health or performance related monitoring applications. The real challenges in employing these wearable wireless sensors on human subjects include: 1) bulky and rigid system design thus, it is difficult to conform to human body contour and 2) limited operational lifespan of batteries with finite energy supply. In this paper, an autonomous body-worn wireless sensor node with flexible energy harvesting (FEH) mechanism, able to conform to body contour, is proposed for biometric monitoring. To be totally sustainable and compact, the FEH mechanism is equipped with an ultralow power management circuit (PMC) specially designed on a flexible PCB. The flexible PMC is able to transfer near maximum electrical power from the input solar energy source to store in the supercapacitor for powering the wireless sensor node. The power consumption of the flexible PMC is only 32.86 $\mu{\rm W}$ . Experimental results show that under indoor condition, typical average lighting intensity of 320 lux, the wearable sensor node is able to continuously monitor the temperature of the wearer, read, and transmit back to the base node in a wireless manner, without the need of any battery. In addition, the designed FEH sensor node flexed onto the wearer body contour at an angle of 30 $^{\circ}$ generates 56 $\mu{\rm W}$ of electrical power, sufficient to sustain its operation for ${>}{\rm 15}~{\rm h}$ .