Lin Xiaoyou, Seet Boon-Chong
IEEE Trans Biomed Circuits Syst. 2017 Apr;11(2):464-473. doi: 10.1109/TBCAS.2016.2615603. Epub 2016 Dec 5.
This paper presents a new design of a wearable plantar pressure monitoring system in the form of a smart sock for sensing abnormal relative pressure changes. One advantage of this approach is that with a battery-free design, this system can be powered solely by radio frequency (RF) energy harvested from a radio frequency identification (RFID) reader unit hosted on a smartphone of the wearer. At the same time, this RFID reader can read foot pressure values from an embedded sensor-tag in the sock. A pressure sensing matrix made of conductive fabric and flexible piezo-resistive material is integrated into the sock during the knitting process. Sensed foot pressures are digitized and stored in the memory of a sensor-tag, thus allowing relative foot pressure values to be tracked. The control unit of the smart sock is assembled on a flexible printed circuit board (FPC) that can be strapped to the lower limb and detached easily when it is not in use. Experiments show that the system can operate reliably in both tasks of RF energy harvesting and pressure measurement.
本文介绍了一种新型可穿戴足底压力监测系统的设计，该系统采用智能袜子的形式，用于感知异常的相对压力变化。这种方法的一个优点是，通过无电池设计，该系统可以仅由从佩戴者智能手机上搭载的射频识别（RFID）读取器单元收集的射频（RF）能量供电。同时，该RFID读取器可以从袜子中的嵌入式传感器标签读取足部压力值。在编织过程中，由导电织物和柔性压阻材料制成的压力传感矩阵被集成到袜子中。感测到的足部压力被数字化并存储在传感器标签的存储器中，从而可以跟踪相对足部压力值。智能袜子的控制单元组装在柔性印刷电路板（FPC）上，该电路板可以绑在下肢上，不使用时可轻松拆卸。实验表明，该系统在射频能量收集和压力测量这两项任务中都能可靠运行。
