Physically Flexible Ultralow-Power Wireless Sensor
Physically Flexible Ultralow-Power Wireless Sensor
Physically Flexible Ultralow-Power Wireless Sensor
TABLE I
F LEX N ODE C OMPONENT S PECIFICATION
Then, the remaining functionalities include the processing and connected via this expansion port. The interface (Expansion B)
communications’ core, sensors, and expansion ports. is on the bottom side of the Flexnode and is intended for
energy harvester add-ons.
B. Sensors
D. Energy Budget and Power Supply
The selection of the sensor components was motivated by
the aim at ultralow-energy dissipation, while the use cases The power supply subsection includes a wireless power
were anticipated to employ low sampling rates. This resulted transfer receiver and conversion using the NFC coil tuned to
in the preference for sensors with low-power modes. The series resonance at 13.56 MHz. The wireless power signal
key components are summarized in Table I, including their from the coil is half-wave rectified and converted for battery
functionalities, specifications, and current consumption from charging using an LTC4079.
manufacturers’ datasheet. Energy is currently stored on a 3.7-V Lithium polymer
The integrated sensor devices include LGA 12 encapsulated battery measuring 10 × 20 × 2 mm3 with a 22-mAh capacity.
LSM303 [29] which measures three-axis acceleration and The battery is monitored with a MAX17043 battery-level
a three-axis magnetometer. Also included is a temperature gauge reporting remaining capacity. The battery voltage is
sensor with an accuracy of 1 ◦ C. The other integrated low- regulated to a stable 2.5 V using an NCP170 linear dropout
power sensor device is 2.5 mm × 2.5 mm LGA packaged regulator.
Bosch BMA280 [30] environmental sensor, which combines III. F UNCTIONALITY
humidity, barometric pressure, and temperature measurements.
The FlexNode is intended for uses in which the main
need is reading the sensor data and sending it to further
C. Processing and Communications’ Core and Interfaces processing without being requested and without protocol-level
The core of Flexnode is the System-on-Chip Nordic handshakes.
Semiconductors nRF52832 with 3 × 3.2 × 0.4 mm3 phys-
ical dimensions [31]. It contains an ultralow-power ARM A. Communications
Cortex-M4F microcontroller, and 2.4-GHz Bluetooth 5 and The wireless communications between the Flexnode and
ANT/ANT+ radios. For storing functionality, a 64-Mb receiver (a BLE-enabled laptop) are based on 2.4-GHz BLE
Macronix MX25R6435F in a 4 × 4 package is included. radios. While BLE provides for substantial flexibility, in the
A PI configuration matching network is used to match the intended applications, there is no requirement for data stream-
RF output to a Johanson 2450AT18B100E chip antenna. The ing or the sensors establishing connections with the hubs.
nRF52832 additionally includes a 13.56-MHz NFA Type 1 Flexnode can utilize connection-based BLE protocols for
106-kb/s receiver, which enables “wake-on-NFC” and “touch- reliable communications; those are reserved for diagnostics
to-pair” capabilities. The NFC coil and NXP Semiconductors and software reconfiguration, and, in the future, for providing
NTAG NT3H1101 support energy harvesting through NFC, public encryption keys.
microcontroller interrupt for wake-on-NFC, and I2C interface In the energy minimizing communication scheme developed
for communication over NFC. Also, an EEPROM for passive for Flexnode, only the advertising part of the connection
data retention is provided. procedure is utilized for data transfers. When comparing
Two interface connectors are included for expansion, allow- the duration of radio communication between connection
ing the addition of further sensing capabilities, or power establishment and advertisement period every 1 or 2 s, the
supplies. The primary interface (Expansion A) is shown on energy efficiency of using advertising packets to transmit
the right edge of the device in Fig. 3. The interface has small amounts of data is obvious. Furthermore, in the connec-
18 signals that include both battery and regulated power tion data transmission scheme, if the connection is dropped,
supplies, ADC inputs, I2C, SPI, and undedicated GPIO pins. the effort to reconnect will significantly increase the power
For software development and testing, the platform can be consumption.
9505207 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 71, 2022
TABLE II
B IT A RRAY OF BME 280 D ATA
TABLE III
Fig. 4. Advertisement current profile.
A DVERTISING PACKET E XAMPLE
TABLE V
E VALUATE D EVICES S ETTINGS
Node F03 had the most power-consuming settings with TABLE VII
average current consumption during transmission at 100.3 µA. P OWER C ONSUMPTION C OMPARISON
Consequently, its average power dissipation is
Iactive ∗ tactive + Isleep ∗ tsleep + Iprocess ∗ tprocess
Iavg = (1)
Ttotal
where I active and t active are the BLE advertising current and
time; I sleep and t sleep are the current and time between two However, for the application that requires data transmission
advertising event; I process and t process are the current and through extended distances, the Long Range Wide Area Net-
time for data processing; and T total is the total time for one work (LoRaWAN) is the most compatible approach [35].
cycle [34]. The average current can be obtained by substituting The selection of the hardware components, including the
the measured values into 1 sensors and the communications scheme, plays an important
3.7 µA ∗ 30 s + 100.3 µA ∗ 20 s + 1400 µA ∗ 0.0003 s role in power dissipation minimization. The Nordic Semi-
50.0003 s conductor nRF52 series with the Arm Cortex M4 processor
= 42.35 µA. (2) is among the best low-power system chips that incorporate
2.4-GHz radio. A power consumption comparison between
From a 2000-mAh battery at 70% efficiency, the node will run our solution against the roughly equivalent ones cited in this
for over 30 000 h or 3.5 years. article is given in Table VII. In the scope of this article,
If the power supply module is an organic photovoltaic (PV) we demonstrate a simple but effective encryption method
harvester, the size of the cell is targeting to minimize power consumption, but the chip is
E electrical capable of using a stronger encryption algorithm with more
A= (3)
H ∗ R ∗ PVefficiency power and time needed.
The Flexnode platform has many extension pins that can be
where used to connect sensors, energy harvesters’ actuators, and indi-
A: area of PV Panel; cators. The future enhancements will include plug-and-play
E electrical : energy required; functionality for the extensions, e.g., through the utilization
H: annual average solar radiation on tilted panels of I2C protocol chip addresses. Moreover, as an I2C channel
−200 kWh/m2 /year; can support multiple sensors, the complexity of the platform
R: solar panel yield or efficiency 15%; design would be well controlled. Also, an energy monitoring
PVefficiency : performance ratio, coefficient for losses −0.75. scheme needs to be implemented to allow balancing the use
In theory, the system could become completely autonomous of sensors against the energy being harvested.
that would not require any battery replacement with an about
1.5-cm2 PV cell minimum size. However, with the current VI. C ONCLUSION
power supply hardware, it supports adjustable battery charging
current to operate from 10 to 250 mA. In many applications, the thickness, size, and flexibility of
the physical platform are important. The current contribution
demonstrates not only those characteristics but also wireless
V. D ISCUSSION
energy-efficient data communications in such a system. The
The aim of this contribution is to present an energy- platform can be expanded with additional sensors and energy
autonomous wireless sensor platform that can be used from harvesters to fit the requirements of relevant applications. With
industrial condition monitoring instruments to wearable human the capability of extending sensor and platform flexibility, this
biosignal measurements devices. The energy consumption has platform can be applied to wearable, bendable, rollable use
been minimized by employing BLE advertising packets for cases with extension platforms, such as sweat analytics and
data transmission. This not only reduces the energy consump- ECG/PPG measurement.
tion of the radio but eliminates almost all protocol complexity. Many monitoring needs do not require high data rates.
While the lack of protocol connection results in data losses, The demonstrated novel low data bandwidth communication
many applications can tolerate moderate ones. Furthermore, scheme is compatible with common standards, enabling to
if the nodes of the network are known, the server side is access sensor nodes even using a regular cell phone with BLE.
capable of detecting failed nodes or excessive data loss rates.
For a particular application, the physically flexible platform
that allows for cutting out redundant parts enables minimizing C ONFLICT OF I NTEREST
the size and weight of the sensor node. The experimental The authors declare to have no known competing financial
sensor nodes were tested continuously for more than a month or any conflict of interests that would have given influence to
and a half without hardware or software complications. the work presented in this article.
The system design suits applications that have low data rates
and benefit from light, small, and thin sensor nodes in low and R EFERENCES
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