Design and simulation of a multi-function MEMS sensor for health and usage monitoring.

Health and usage monitoring as a technique for online test, diagnosis or prognosis of structures and systems has evolved as a key technology for future critical systems. The technology, often referred to as HUMS is usually based around sensors that must be more reliable than the system or structure they are monitoring. This paper proposes a fault tolerant sensor architecture and demonstrates the feasibility of realising this architecture through the design of a dual mode humidity/pressure MEMS sensor with an integrated temperature function. The sensor has a simple structure, good linearity and sensitivity, and the potential for implementation of built-in-self-test features. We also propose a re-configurable sensor network based on the multi-functional sensor concept that supports both normal operational and fail safe modes. The architecture has the potential to significantly increase system reliability and supports a reduction in the number of sensors required in future HUMS devices. The technique has potential in a wide range of applications, especially within wireless sensor networks

Fully Integrated Biochip Platforms for Advanced Healthcare

Recent advances in microelectronics and biosensors are enabling developments of innovative biochips for advanced healthcare by providing fully integrated platforms for continuous monitoring of a large set of human disease biomarkers. Continuous monitoring of several human metabolites can be addressed by using fully integrated and minimally invasive devices located in the sub-cutis, typically in the peritoneal region. This extends the techniques of continuous monitoring of glucose currently being pursued with diabetic patients. However, several issues have to be considered in order to succeed in developing fully integrated and minimally invasive implantable devices. These innovative devices require a high-degree of integration, minimal invasive surgery, long-term biocompatibility, security and privacy in data transmission, high reliability, high reproducibility, high specificity, low detection limit and high sensitivity. Recent advances in the field have already proposed possible solutions for several of these issues. The aim of the present paper is to present a broad spectrum of recent results and to propose future directions of development in order to obtain fully implantable systems for the continuous monitoring of the human metabolism in advanced healthcare applications

Program your city: Designing an urban integrated open data API

Cities accumulate and distribute vast sets of digital information. Many decision-making and planning processes in councils, local governments and organisations are based on both real-time and historical data. Until recently, only a small, carefully selected subset of this information has been released to the public – usually for specific purposes (e.g. train timetables, release of planning application through websites to name just a few). This situation is however changing rapidly. Regulatory frameworks, such as the Freedom of Information Legislation in the US, the UK, the European Union and many other countries guarantee public access to data held by the state. One of the results of this legislation and changing attitudes towards open data has been the widespread release of public information as part of recent Government 2.0 initiatives. This includes the creation of public data catalogues such as data.gov.au (U.S.), data.gov.uk (U.K.), data.gov.au (Australia) at federal government levels, and datasf.org (San Francisco) and data.london.gov.uk (London) at municipal levels. The release of this data has opened up the possibility of a wide range of future applications and services which are now the subject of intensified research efforts. Previous research endeavours have explored the creation of specialised tools to aid decision-making by urban citizens, councils and other stakeholders (Calabrese, Kloeckl & Ratti, 2008; Paulos, Honicky & Hooker, 2009). While these initiatives represent an important step towards open data, they too often result in mere collections of data repositories. Proprietary database formats and the lack of an open application programming interface (API) limit the full potential achievable by allowing these data sets to be cross-queried. Our research, presented in this paper, looks beyond the pure release of data. It is concerned with three essential questions: First, how can data from different sources be integrated into a consistent framework and made accessible? Second, how can ordinary citizens be supported in easily composing data from different sources in order to address their specific problems? Third, what are interfaces that make it easy for citizens to interact with data in an urban environment? How can data be accessed and collected

Synchronous wearable wireless body sensor network composed of autonomous textile nodes

A novel, fully-autonomous, wearable, wireless sensor network is presented, where each flexible textile node performs cooperative synchronous acquisition and distributed event detection. Computationally efficient situational-awareness algorithms are implemented on the low-power microcontroller present on each flexible node. The detected events are wirelessly transmitted to a base station, directly, as well as forwarded by other on-body nodes. For each node, a dual-polarized textile patch antenna serves as a platform for the flexible electronic circuitry. Therefore, the system is particularly suitable for comfortable and unobtrusive integration into garments. In the meantime, polarization diversity can be exploited to improve the reliability and energy-efficiency of the wireless transmission. Extensive experiments in realistic conditions have demonstrated that this new autonomous, body-centric, textile-antenna, wireless sensor network is able to correctly detect different operating conditions of a firefighter during an intervention. By relying on four network nodes integrated into the protective garment, this functionality is implemented locally, on the body, and in real time. In addition, the received sensor data are reliably transferred to a central access point at the command post, for more detailed and more comprehensive real-time visualization. This information provides coordinators and commanders with situational awareness of the entire rescue operation. A statistical analysis of measured on-body node-to-node, as well as off-body person-to-person channels is included, confirming the reliability of the communication system

Flexible dual-diversity wearable wireless node integrated on a dual-polarised textile patch antenna

A new textile wearable wireless node, for operation in the 2.45 GHz industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) band, is proposed. It consists of a dual-polarised textile patch antenna with integrated microcontroller, sensor, memory and transceiver with receive diversity. Integrated into a garment, the flexible unit may serve for fall detection, as well as for patient or rescue-worker monitoring. Fragile and lossy interconnections are eliminated. They are replaced by very short radiofrequency signal paths in the antenna feed plane, reducing electromagnetic compatibility and signal integrity problems. The compact and flexible module combines sensing and wireless channel monitoring functionality with reliable and energy-efficient off-body wireless communication capability, by fully exploiting dual polarisation diversity. By integrating a battery, a fully autonomous and flexible system is obtained. This novel textile wireless node was validated, both in flat and bent state, in the anechoic chamber, assessing the characteristics of the integrated system in free-space conditions. Moreover, its performance was verified in various real-world conditions, integrated into a firefighter garment, and used as an autonomous body-centric measurement device

On-chip non-dispersive infrared CO2 sensor based on an integrating cylinder

In this paper, we propose a novel, miniaturized non-dispersive infrared (NDIR) CO2 sensor implemented on a silicon chip. The sensor has a simple structure, consisting of a hollow metallic cylindrical cavity along with access waveguides. A detailed analysis of the proposed sensor is presented. Simulation with 3D ray tracing shows that an integrating cylinder with 4 mm diameter gives an equivalent optical path length of 3 . 5 cm. The sensor is fabricated using Deep Reactive Ion Etching (DRIE) and wafer bonding. The fabricated sensor was evaluated by performing a CO2 concentration measurement, showing a limit of detection of ∼100 ppm. The response time of the sensor is only ∼2.8 s, due to its small footprint. The use of DRIE-based waveguide structures enables mass fabrication, as well as the potential co-integration of flip-chip integrated midIR light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and photodetectors, resulting in a compact, low-power, and low-cost NDIR CO2 sensor

Extending systems-on-chip to the third dimension : performance, cost and technological tradeoffs.

Because of the today's market demand for high-performance, high-density portable hand-held applications, electronic system design technology has shifted the focus from 2-D planar SoC single-chip solutions to different alternative options as tiled silicon and single-level embedded modules as well as 3-D integration. Among the various choices, finding an optimal solution for system implementation dealt usually with cost, performance and other technological trade-off analysis at the system conceptual level. It has been identified that the decisions made within the first 20% of the total design cycle time will ultimately result up to 80% of the final product cost. In this paper, we discuss appropriate and realistic metric for performance and cost trade-off analysis both at system conceptual level (up-front in the design phase) and at implementation phase for verification in the three-dimensional integration. In order to validate the methodology, two ubiquitous electronic systems are analyzed under various implementation schemes and discuss the pros and cons of each of them

Overview of sensors suitable for active flow control methods

Hlavným cieľom tejto bakalárskej práce bolo vytvorenie prehľadu vyvíjaných a už aplikovaných senzorov pre účely aktívneho riadenia prúdov. Senzory musia splňovať niektoré podmienky, preto výber senzorov bol naviazaný na reálnych výsledkoch testovacích programov, popis ktorých tvorí prvú časť tejto bakalárskej práce. Opis technológie a princíp fungovania senzorov je popísaný v druhej časti tejto práce.The main purpose of this bachelor thesis was to create the overview of the sensors developed for the future active flow control applications and overview the sensors already used in the active flow control applications. The sensors have to fulfil several requirements, so selection for the overview was based on the real flight test programs results, which were described in the first part of the thesis. The sensors technology description and operation principles were included in the second part of the thesis

Scalable Microfabrication Procedures for Adhesive-Integrated Flexible and Stretchable Electronic Sensors.

New classes of ultrathin flexible and stretchable devices have changed the way modern electronics are designed to interact with their target systems. Though more and more novel technologies surface and steer the way we think about future electronics, there exists an unmet need in regards to optimizing the fabrication procedures for these devices so that large-scale industrial translation is realistic. This article presents an unconventional approach for facile microfabrication and processing of adhesive-peeled (AP) flexible sensors. By assembling AP sensors on a weakly-adhering substrate in an inverted fashion, we demonstrate a procedure with 50% reduced end-to-end processing time that achieves greater levels of fabrication yield. The methodology is used to demonstrate the fabrication of electrical and mechanical flexible and stretchable AP sensors that are peeled-off their carrier substrates by consumer adhesives. In using this approach, we outline the manner by which adhesion is maintained and buckling is reduced for gold film processing on polydimethylsiloxane substrates. In addition, we demonstrate the compatibility of our methodology with large-scale post-processing using a roll-to-roll approach