Collaborative Research: CNS Medium: Systems Foundations for Battery-free Body Area Intelligence and Sensing

An exciting new paradigm for wearable health sensors is one where sensors and batteries need not be integrated within the same device. This project seeks to realize this vision by utilizing human tissue as a medium for transferring power and data between different device pairs. The project objective is to develop hardware and software mechanisms that allow heterogeneous networks of sensors that are largely battery-free.

The key working principle is the design of a system where energy transmitters that include batteries, provide power to relatively many battery-free sensors while simultaneously serving as an endpoint for data collection from the sensors. The project has three thrusts: 1) quantifying the performance and safety issues of the use of human tissue as a propagation medium for power and communications; 2) the design of hardware and software primitives needed to facilitate energy sharing between networks of battery-free devices; 3) the operating system, run-time support, and tools needed to coordinate devices that in turn enable higher level health applications.

The technologies developed in this work will impact a range of potential health applications including remote rehabilitation, nutrition monitoring, and other real-time sensing tasks enabled by distributed sensors worn for long time periods. The technologies developed as part of this project have the potential to greatly optimize the design of the wearable health sensors themselves.

Additionally, the elimination of batteries in remotely powered sensors will eliminate the growing waste stream that is a consequence of battery wear out. Outcomes of this project will be integrated into a number of ongoing outreach activities that expose K-12 and undergraduate students to the potential benefits of wearable health technologies.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.