2017 IEEE 14th International Conference on Wearable and Implantable Body Sensor Networks (BSN), 2017
Body temperature is among most important biometric indicators that are normally checked in both d... more Body temperature is among most important biometric indicators that are normally checked in both domestic and hospital environments. The way to collect such parameter could be dramatically improved thanks to the Epidermal Electronics technology enabling plaster-like devices suitable to on-skin temperature sensing and capable of wireless communication with an electromagnetic reading module. The practical applicability of an eco-friendly battery-less epidermal thermometer, compatible with the UHF RFID standard, is here discussed by the help of experimentation with some volunteers. Comfortable reading procedures can be applied for both the operator and the patient. Experiments revealed a non negligible sensitivity of the temperature measurement versus the mutual distance between the reader and the sensor, that must be removed by a proper threshold filtering. Finally, the analysis of the sensor response for different placement position over the body, demonstrates that the axilla and chest loci provide only 0.6°C deviation from a reference tympanic measurement and are well accepted by the user which does not complain about the presence of the sensor.
2020 XXXIIIrd General Assembly and Scientific Symposium of the International Union of Radio Science, 2020
Tactile Internet (TI) is the new frontier of the Internet of Things that is based on free-hand ge... more Tactile Internet (TI) is the new frontier of the Internet of Things that is based on free-hand gestures as a human/computer interface. A promising enabler for TI is the recently introduced Radiofrequency Finger Augmentation Device (R-FAD) family, assistive technology for the recovery of lost or damaged senses. The R-FAD core comprises a wrist reader coupled in near-field with a fingertip sensor tag. To prevent the interruption of the wrist-finger link during the touch of objects, self-tuning microchips must be used since they are capable to adapt their internal impedance and preserve the communication. A unitary electromagnetic/electric model is here proposed to address the double specificity of R-FAD devices for TI, namely the Near-Field interaction among the antennas, and the dynamic behavior of the IC. The model is based on a two-port network and is suitable for the application to the constrained design of robust communication links.
IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, 2020
Recently introduced self-tuning RFID tags are capable to dynamically modify the input impedance o... more Recently introduced self-tuning RFID tags are capable to dynamically modify the input impedance of the embedded microchip transponder in order to compensate the possible impedance mismatch with the antenna, thus making the communication performance rather insensitive to the nearby environment. A general method for the design of this new class of tags is presented with the purpose to master the complex configuration, where the tag is placed at a close distance from the interrogating antenna, and the free-space assumption is not valid. A two-port system is introduced, and the network-oriented reformulation of self-tuning action permits to derive an optimization problem for the minimization of the interrogation power for a wide range of boundary conditions. The method is demonstrated, both numerically and experimentally, through the application of a finger augmentation device, which aimed to achieve a smart interaction with touched objects.
IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, 2018
Radiofrequency-Identification Finger-Augmented Devices (R-FAD) identify a particular wearable tec... more Radiofrequency-Identification Finger-Augmented Devices (R-FAD) identify a particular wearable technology suitable to turn the human fingers into enhanced sensing surfaces to restore lost senses in impaired people as well as to augment the existing ones. The communication channel of R-FAD, involving a reader's antenna placed onto the wrist and tag antennas stuck onto the fingers, is here characterized in the UHF RFID band by means of both numerical simulations, accounting for several options of the system, and an experimental campaign with volunteers asked to reproduce natural gestures of the hands. The study identifies the most appropriate placement of the devices and, above all, it quantifies the robustness of the link against the human variability. The channel follows a Lognormal Cumulative probability law indicating that the minimum required power to establish a reliable RFID link is 18-27 dBm depending on the chip sensitivity. Measurements finally revealed a remarkable correlation of the minimum required power from the reader with the volume of the hand.
IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, 2018
The recently introduced inkjet printing technology with ambient-sintering is here investigated fo... more The recently introduced inkjet printing technology with ambient-sintering is here investigated for the fabrication of epidermal antennas suitable for Radiofrequency Identification (RFID) and Sensing. The attractive feature of this manufacturing process is the possibility to use low-cost printers without any high-temperature curing. In spite of the estimated maximum achievable conductivity of the ink (UHF = 1 ⇥ 10 5 S/m) in UHF-RFID band is two orders of magnitude lower than that of the bulk copper, a threefold printing process provides the same on-skin radiating performance as manufacturing technologies using bulk conductors. Experiments demonstrate that the epidermal antennas printed on PET substrate are insensitive to moderate mechanical stress, like the natural bending occurring over the human body, and to the possible exposure to body fluids (e.g. sweat). Moreover, the electromagnetic response remains stable over the time when the printed layouts are coated with biocompatible membranes.
2016 46th European Microwave Conference (EuMC), 2016
Skin-mounted electronics is the next wave beyond wearable devices for unobtrusively picking up vi... more Skin-mounted electronics is the next wave beyond wearable devices for unobtrusively picking up vital signs (temperature, hydration, biopotentials…) over the body surface. The recent evolution of UHF RFID technology towards epidermal sensing applications plays a key role to provide stick on sensors with wireless powering and remote reading. In this paper different state of the art manufacturing technologies (carved adhesive copper, microwires, inkjet printing with self-sintering Ag-ink and photolithography) are applied to the fabrication a small size UHF RFID epidermal sensor suitable for measurements of the surface body temperature. Performance of the resulting prototypes are systematically compared in terms of achievable maximum gain, usability of bio-compatible conformable substrates, time and costs for large-scale production.
Passive radio-frequency identification technology shows a lot of promise in medical applications,... more Passive radio-frequency identification technology shows a lot of promise in medical applications, as described in "Movement Detection of Human Body Segments" by Amendola, Biachi, and Marrocco.
IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, 2015
Originally introduced by the material science community, the epidermal electronics is now collect... more Originally introduced by the material science community, the epidermal electronics is now collecting interest also among antenna engineers for the potentiality to achieve thin and flexible sensing transponders that are suitable to application over the epidermis. Unlike conventional wearable antennas, which are generally decoupled by the lossy human body by means of spacers or shielding sheets, epidermal tags need to be placed at a very close touch with the skin thus providing poor communication capabilities. This paper investigates, by means of a detailed numerical and experimental study, the performance of an epidermal dual-loop tag for UHF radiofrequency identification (RFID) depending on the specific placement over different parts of the human body and for a variety of volunteers. An on-body tuning mechanism is also introduced and demonstrated in real applications at the purpose to improve the tag response and hence to enable the use of a same tag layout for all the UHF-RFID bands and for several placement loci.
IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, 2015
Brain-machine interface (BMI) technology has tremendous potential to revolutionize healthcare by ... more Brain-machine interface (BMI) technology has tremendous potential to revolutionize healthcare by greatly improving the quality of life of millions of people suffering from a wide variety of neurological conditions. RFID-inspired backscattering is a promising approach to wireless powering of miniature neural sensors required in BMI interfaces. We analyze the functionality of mm-size loop antennas in the wireless powering of miniature cortical implants through measurements in a human head equivalent liquid phantom and in the head of a post-mortem pig. For the first time, we present the design and measurement of a miniature 1 1 1 mm 3 backscattering device based on a cubic loop connected with an RFID IC. Our measurement results show that this very small loop receives sufficient electromagnetic power to activate the IC when the device is implanted in a pig's head. This demonstrates the feasibility of extremely small implant antennas in challenging wireless biomedical systems. Index Terms-backscattering neural sensor, near field inductive link, neural prostheses, wireless brain-machine interface I. INTRODUCTION RAIN-Machine Interfaces (BMI) is a young multidisciplinary field that has grown tremendously during the last decade [1]. BMI systems have enormous potential as a therapeutic technology that will improve the quality of life of millions of people suffering from spinal cord injury, stroke, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and other severely disabling neurological conditions. However, one of the main challenges in the development towards clinically viable BMIs is the lack of implantable technology that lasts for a lifetime. Fully integrated, ultra-low Manuscript
Moving limbs within an electromagnetic field radiated by an interrogating antenna will generate a... more Moving limbs within an electromagnetic field radiated by an interrogating antenna will generate a modulation of the backscattered field sensed by a receiver. The measured signals may therefore carry raw information about the human motion. Moreover, the proper placement of UHF passive Radiofrequency Identification (RFID) tags over body segments will increase the amount of collected signals. This paper investigate the potentiality of a possible synergy between Electromagnetics and Machine Learning technology at the purpose to recognize and classify, for the first time, the gestures of arms and legs by using only passive transponders. Electromagnetic signals backscattered from the tags during limb motion are collected by a fixed reader antenna and then processed by the Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithm. Experimental results demonstrated a degree of accuracy in the classification of periodic movements that is fully comparable with that of more complex systems involving active wearable transponders.
2016 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation (APSURSI), 2016
The measurement of skin temperature is essential in both thermo-physiological and clinical applic... more The measurement of skin temperature is essential in both thermo-physiological and clinical applications as well as for sport medicine. The jointed development of Epidermal Electronics systems and UHF RFID technology for skin applications originates novel solution for the wireless passive sensing of body temperature. In this paper the thermal characterization of a small size (2.5cm × 5cm) epidermal RFID thermometer is addressed. After unifom recalibration, the accuracy of the RFID sensors results below 0.25°C while the response time is equal to 4.3 sec, thus enabling the reliable monitoring of surface temperature under both static and dynamic conditions.
2017 IEEE International Conference on RFID (RFID), 2017
Finger-Augmented Devices (FAD) identify a particular wearable technology suitable to turn the hum... more Finger-Augmented Devices (FAD) identify a particular wearable technology suitable to turn the human fingers into enhanced sensing surfaces for advanced human-computer interfaces. The feasibility of a full on-body UHF RFID-based FAD is here investigated for the first time. The system is aimed at providing impaired people suffering from a lack of thermal feeling, due to pathological disorders, with a realtime feedback of the temperature sensed by the fingertips. The considered RFID-FAD comprises an epidermal tag suitable to conformal application over the fingertip and an interrogation wrist patch antenna. The electromagnetic challenge concerns the possibility to establish a robust RFID link when both the reader antenna and the passive fingertip tag are attached onto the lossy human skin. The occurring near-field interaction is modeled by a two-port system and experimentally tested by means of a 3D hand mockup made by additive manufacturing. Simulations and measurement permitted to der...
2019 IEEE 16th International Conference on Wearable and Implantable Body Sensor Networks (BSN), 2019
5G will play a key role in developing high speed wearable and epidermal electronics for healthcar... more 5G will play a key role in developing high speed wearable and epidermal electronics for healthcare applications such as patient monitoring, tele-surgery, and augmented sensorial abilities (both for humans and robots). At the same time, developing a 5G-RFID system based on backscattering communication will help reducing the power consumption and lowering the electronic complexity. Nevertheless, the high path losses and the strong electromagnetic interactions of the skin might severely limit ranges and performances of epidermal RFIDs operating at 5G frequencies. In this paper, the effects of the human skin on the link budget of epidermal RFID dipoles at microwave and mmWave frequencies are investigated through numerical simulations. Results show that an epidermal RFID sensor tags can reach ranges comparable with UHF systems by using either a single dipole at 5.8 GHz or a 23-element array of dipoles at 60 GHz when using the currently available chip sensitivities (−15 dBm) and reader antenna gains (6 dBi). Smaller antenna sizes of a 5G RFID sensor will allow the integration of tags in new ubiquitous non-invasive epidermal and wearable electronics, while the high frequencies will enable tracking with mm- and micro-scale resolutions for medical applications (e.g.: micro-ablation or muscular and neural rehabilitation).
2018 IEEE/MTT-S International Microwave Symposium - IMS, 2018
Skin sensors based on Radiofrequency Identification enable non-invasive monitoring of human physi... more Skin sensors based on Radiofrequency Identification enable non-invasive monitoring of human physiologic parameters. To speed up the experimentations of new sensing modalities and their possible applications, a general purpose on-skin oriented board is here described. A 3 cm by 3 cm flexible Kapton layer hosts a miniaturized open-loop antenna tunable in the worldwide UHF RFID band (860–960)MHz, a microchip with internal ADC and pads for interconnecting external sensors and a battery for data-logging mode. The epidermal board can be integrated into plasters and is suitable to measure both skin and external parameters. When working in Battery Assisted Passive mode it can be read up to 1.5 m and hence the wearer can automatically upload the stored data in mobility on crossing a gate. The device is preliminarily experimented in the measurement of the temperature of the skin and of the moisture on clothes.
Body temperature is one of the most effective biometric indicators revealing the health condition... more Body temperature is one of the most effective biometric indicators revealing the health conditions of a person. Wireless wearable sensors may completely change the way the body temperature is collected, stored and hence processed. Very recently, the authors developed battery-less low cost wireless thermometers by using the paradigm of the emerging Epidermal Electronics technology. Such devices are suitable to placement over the skin like a plaster or a tattoo and are compatible with the UHF Radiofrequency Identification (RFID) standard. Their potential application in clinical usage is here discussed by the help of volunteers at the University Hospital of Roma Tor Vergata. The experimental study is aimed at understanding the robustness of the sensor output versus the measurement procedure, the positioning over different body parts and several patients. Early results of the on-going clinical trial revealed that the variance of RFID sensors is comparable with that of tympanic thermometer. The required compensation offset resulted rather patient-specific and can even vary for a same user along different days. Nevertheless, the on-chest placement is likely to mitigate this uncertainty.
2017 IEEE International Conference on RFID Technology & Application (RFID-TA), 2017
The UHF Radiofrequency Identification technology offers nowadays a viable technological solution ... more The UHF Radiofrequency Identification technology offers nowadays a viable technological solution for the implementation of low-level environmental monitoring of connected critical infrastructures to be protected from both physical threats and cyber attacks. An RFID sensor network was developed within the H2020 SCISSOR project, by addressing the design of both hardware components, that is a new family of multi-purpose wireless boards, and of control software handling the network topology. The hierarchical system is able to the detect complex, potentially dangerous, events such as the un-authorized access to a restricted area, anomalies of the electrical equipments, or the unusual variation of environmental parameters. The first real-world test-bed has been deployed inside an operational smart-grid on the Favignana Island. Currently, the network is fully working and remotely accessible.
2019 IEEE International Conference on RFID Technology and Applications (RFID-TA), 2019
Industry 4.0 is worldwide considered the upcoming revolution in manufacturing and industrial proc... more Industry 4.0 is worldwide considered the upcoming revolution in manufacturing and industrial processes. Automation, sensors and data analytics are expected to play a key role in improving performances of production and optimizing quality of objects in exercise. Great opportunities could be offered by RFID technology. Effective applications examples and case studies are in continuous growth. The paper introduces the possible architectures and the relative implementations in real scenario, together with the most critical challenges affecting communication and sensing performances.
2017 IEEE 14th International Conference on Wearable and Implantable Body Sensor Networks (BSN), 2017
Body temperature is among most important biometric indicators that are normally checked in both d... more Body temperature is among most important biometric indicators that are normally checked in both domestic and hospital environments. The way to collect such parameter could be dramatically improved thanks to the Epidermal Electronics technology enabling plaster-like devices suitable to on-skin temperature sensing and capable of wireless communication with an electromagnetic reading module. The practical applicability of an eco-friendly battery-less epidermal thermometer, compatible with the UHF RFID standard, is here discussed by the help of experimentation with some volunteers. Comfortable reading procedures can be applied for both the operator and the patient. Experiments revealed a non negligible sensitivity of the temperature measurement versus the mutual distance between the reader and the sensor, that must be removed by a proper threshold filtering. Finally, the analysis of the sensor response for different placement position over the body, demonstrates that the axilla and chest loci provide only 0.6°C deviation from a reference tympanic measurement and are well accepted by the user which does not complain about the presence of the sensor.
2020 XXXIIIrd General Assembly and Scientific Symposium of the International Union of Radio Science, 2020
Tactile Internet (TI) is the new frontier of the Internet of Things that is based on free-hand ge... more Tactile Internet (TI) is the new frontier of the Internet of Things that is based on free-hand gestures as a human/computer interface. A promising enabler for TI is the recently introduced Radiofrequency Finger Augmentation Device (R-FAD) family, assistive technology for the recovery of lost or damaged senses. The R-FAD core comprises a wrist reader coupled in near-field with a fingertip sensor tag. To prevent the interruption of the wrist-finger link during the touch of objects, self-tuning microchips must be used since they are capable to adapt their internal impedance and preserve the communication. A unitary electromagnetic/electric model is here proposed to address the double specificity of R-FAD devices for TI, namely the Near-Field interaction among the antennas, and the dynamic behavior of the IC. The model is based on a two-port network and is suitable for the application to the constrained design of robust communication links.
IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, 2020
Recently introduced self-tuning RFID tags are capable to dynamically modify the input impedance o... more Recently introduced self-tuning RFID tags are capable to dynamically modify the input impedance of the embedded microchip transponder in order to compensate the possible impedance mismatch with the antenna, thus making the communication performance rather insensitive to the nearby environment. A general method for the design of this new class of tags is presented with the purpose to master the complex configuration, where the tag is placed at a close distance from the interrogating antenna, and the free-space assumption is not valid. A two-port system is introduced, and the network-oriented reformulation of self-tuning action permits to derive an optimization problem for the minimization of the interrogation power for a wide range of boundary conditions. The method is demonstrated, both numerically and experimentally, through the application of a finger augmentation device, which aimed to achieve a smart interaction with touched objects.
IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, 2018
Radiofrequency-Identification Finger-Augmented Devices (R-FAD) identify a particular wearable tec... more Radiofrequency-Identification Finger-Augmented Devices (R-FAD) identify a particular wearable technology suitable to turn the human fingers into enhanced sensing surfaces to restore lost senses in impaired people as well as to augment the existing ones. The communication channel of R-FAD, involving a reader's antenna placed onto the wrist and tag antennas stuck onto the fingers, is here characterized in the UHF RFID band by means of both numerical simulations, accounting for several options of the system, and an experimental campaign with volunteers asked to reproduce natural gestures of the hands. The study identifies the most appropriate placement of the devices and, above all, it quantifies the robustness of the link against the human variability. The channel follows a Lognormal Cumulative probability law indicating that the minimum required power to establish a reliable RFID link is 18-27 dBm depending on the chip sensitivity. Measurements finally revealed a remarkable correlation of the minimum required power from the reader with the volume of the hand.
IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, 2018
The recently introduced inkjet printing technology with ambient-sintering is here investigated fo... more The recently introduced inkjet printing technology with ambient-sintering is here investigated for the fabrication of epidermal antennas suitable for Radiofrequency Identification (RFID) and Sensing. The attractive feature of this manufacturing process is the possibility to use low-cost printers without any high-temperature curing. In spite of the estimated maximum achievable conductivity of the ink (UHF = 1 ⇥ 10 5 S/m) in UHF-RFID band is two orders of magnitude lower than that of the bulk copper, a threefold printing process provides the same on-skin radiating performance as manufacturing technologies using bulk conductors. Experiments demonstrate that the epidermal antennas printed on PET substrate are insensitive to moderate mechanical stress, like the natural bending occurring over the human body, and to the possible exposure to body fluids (e.g. sweat). Moreover, the electromagnetic response remains stable over the time when the printed layouts are coated with biocompatible membranes.
2016 46th European Microwave Conference (EuMC), 2016
Skin-mounted electronics is the next wave beyond wearable devices for unobtrusively picking up vi... more Skin-mounted electronics is the next wave beyond wearable devices for unobtrusively picking up vital signs (temperature, hydration, biopotentials…) over the body surface. The recent evolution of UHF RFID technology towards epidermal sensing applications plays a key role to provide stick on sensors with wireless powering and remote reading. In this paper different state of the art manufacturing technologies (carved adhesive copper, microwires, inkjet printing with self-sintering Ag-ink and photolithography) are applied to the fabrication a small size UHF RFID epidermal sensor suitable for measurements of the surface body temperature. Performance of the resulting prototypes are systematically compared in terms of achievable maximum gain, usability of bio-compatible conformable substrates, time and costs for large-scale production.
Passive radio-frequency identification technology shows a lot of promise in medical applications,... more Passive radio-frequency identification technology shows a lot of promise in medical applications, as described in "Movement Detection of Human Body Segments" by Amendola, Biachi, and Marrocco.
IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, 2015
Originally introduced by the material science community, the epidermal electronics is now collect... more Originally introduced by the material science community, the epidermal electronics is now collecting interest also among antenna engineers for the potentiality to achieve thin and flexible sensing transponders that are suitable to application over the epidermis. Unlike conventional wearable antennas, which are generally decoupled by the lossy human body by means of spacers or shielding sheets, epidermal tags need to be placed at a very close touch with the skin thus providing poor communication capabilities. This paper investigates, by means of a detailed numerical and experimental study, the performance of an epidermal dual-loop tag for UHF radiofrequency identification (RFID) depending on the specific placement over different parts of the human body and for a variety of volunteers. An on-body tuning mechanism is also introduced and demonstrated in real applications at the purpose to improve the tag response and hence to enable the use of a same tag layout for all the UHF-RFID bands and for several placement loci.
IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, 2015
Brain-machine interface (BMI) technology has tremendous potential to revolutionize healthcare by ... more Brain-machine interface (BMI) technology has tremendous potential to revolutionize healthcare by greatly improving the quality of life of millions of people suffering from a wide variety of neurological conditions. RFID-inspired backscattering is a promising approach to wireless powering of miniature neural sensors required in BMI interfaces. We analyze the functionality of mm-size loop antennas in the wireless powering of miniature cortical implants through measurements in a human head equivalent liquid phantom and in the head of a post-mortem pig. For the first time, we present the design and measurement of a miniature 1 1 1 mm 3 backscattering device based on a cubic loop connected with an RFID IC. Our measurement results show that this very small loop receives sufficient electromagnetic power to activate the IC when the device is implanted in a pig's head. This demonstrates the feasibility of extremely small implant antennas in challenging wireless biomedical systems. Index Terms-backscattering neural sensor, near field inductive link, neural prostheses, wireless brain-machine interface I. INTRODUCTION RAIN-Machine Interfaces (BMI) is a young multidisciplinary field that has grown tremendously during the last decade [1]. BMI systems have enormous potential as a therapeutic technology that will improve the quality of life of millions of people suffering from spinal cord injury, stroke, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and other severely disabling neurological conditions. However, one of the main challenges in the development towards clinically viable BMIs is the lack of implantable technology that lasts for a lifetime. Fully integrated, ultra-low Manuscript
Moving limbs within an electromagnetic field radiated by an interrogating antenna will generate a... more Moving limbs within an electromagnetic field radiated by an interrogating antenna will generate a modulation of the backscattered field sensed by a receiver. The measured signals may therefore carry raw information about the human motion. Moreover, the proper placement of UHF passive Radiofrequency Identification (RFID) tags over body segments will increase the amount of collected signals. This paper investigate the potentiality of a possible synergy between Electromagnetics and Machine Learning technology at the purpose to recognize and classify, for the first time, the gestures of arms and legs by using only passive transponders. Electromagnetic signals backscattered from the tags during limb motion are collected by a fixed reader antenna and then processed by the Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithm. Experimental results demonstrated a degree of accuracy in the classification of periodic movements that is fully comparable with that of more complex systems involving active wearable transponders.
2016 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation (APSURSI), 2016
The measurement of skin temperature is essential in both thermo-physiological and clinical applic... more The measurement of skin temperature is essential in both thermo-physiological and clinical applications as well as for sport medicine. The jointed development of Epidermal Electronics systems and UHF RFID technology for skin applications originates novel solution for the wireless passive sensing of body temperature. In this paper the thermal characterization of a small size (2.5cm × 5cm) epidermal RFID thermometer is addressed. After unifom recalibration, the accuracy of the RFID sensors results below 0.25°C while the response time is equal to 4.3 sec, thus enabling the reliable monitoring of surface temperature under both static and dynamic conditions.
2017 IEEE International Conference on RFID (RFID), 2017
Finger-Augmented Devices (FAD) identify a particular wearable technology suitable to turn the hum... more Finger-Augmented Devices (FAD) identify a particular wearable technology suitable to turn the human fingers into enhanced sensing surfaces for advanced human-computer interfaces. The feasibility of a full on-body UHF RFID-based FAD is here investigated for the first time. The system is aimed at providing impaired people suffering from a lack of thermal feeling, due to pathological disorders, with a realtime feedback of the temperature sensed by the fingertips. The considered RFID-FAD comprises an epidermal tag suitable to conformal application over the fingertip and an interrogation wrist patch antenna. The electromagnetic challenge concerns the possibility to establish a robust RFID link when both the reader antenna and the passive fingertip tag are attached onto the lossy human skin. The occurring near-field interaction is modeled by a two-port system and experimentally tested by means of a 3D hand mockup made by additive manufacturing. Simulations and measurement permitted to der...
2019 IEEE 16th International Conference on Wearable and Implantable Body Sensor Networks (BSN), 2019
5G will play a key role in developing high speed wearable and epidermal electronics for healthcar... more 5G will play a key role in developing high speed wearable and epidermal electronics for healthcare applications such as patient monitoring, tele-surgery, and augmented sensorial abilities (both for humans and robots). At the same time, developing a 5G-RFID system based on backscattering communication will help reducing the power consumption and lowering the electronic complexity. Nevertheless, the high path losses and the strong electromagnetic interactions of the skin might severely limit ranges and performances of epidermal RFIDs operating at 5G frequencies. In this paper, the effects of the human skin on the link budget of epidermal RFID dipoles at microwave and mmWave frequencies are investigated through numerical simulations. Results show that an epidermal RFID sensor tags can reach ranges comparable with UHF systems by using either a single dipole at 5.8 GHz or a 23-element array of dipoles at 60 GHz when using the currently available chip sensitivities (−15 dBm) and reader antenna gains (6 dBi). Smaller antenna sizes of a 5G RFID sensor will allow the integration of tags in new ubiquitous non-invasive epidermal and wearable electronics, while the high frequencies will enable tracking with mm- and micro-scale resolutions for medical applications (e.g.: micro-ablation or muscular and neural rehabilitation).
2018 IEEE/MTT-S International Microwave Symposium - IMS, 2018
Skin sensors based on Radiofrequency Identification enable non-invasive monitoring of human physi... more Skin sensors based on Radiofrequency Identification enable non-invasive monitoring of human physiologic parameters. To speed up the experimentations of new sensing modalities and their possible applications, a general purpose on-skin oriented board is here described. A 3 cm by 3 cm flexible Kapton layer hosts a miniaturized open-loop antenna tunable in the worldwide UHF RFID band (860–960)MHz, a microchip with internal ADC and pads for interconnecting external sensors and a battery for data-logging mode. The epidermal board can be integrated into plasters and is suitable to measure both skin and external parameters. When working in Battery Assisted Passive mode it can be read up to 1.5 m and hence the wearer can automatically upload the stored data in mobility on crossing a gate. The device is preliminarily experimented in the measurement of the temperature of the skin and of the moisture on clothes.
Body temperature is one of the most effective biometric indicators revealing the health condition... more Body temperature is one of the most effective biometric indicators revealing the health conditions of a person. Wireless wearable sensors may completely change the way the body temperature is collected, stored and hence processed. Very recently, the authors developed battery-less low cost wireless thermometers by using the paradigm of the emerging Epidermal Electronics technology. Such devices are suitable to placement over the skin like a plaster or a tattoo and are compatible with the UHF Radiofrequency Identification (RFID) standard. Their potential application in clinical usage is here discussed by the help of volunteers at the University Hospital of Roma Tor Vergata. The experimental study is aimed at understanding the robustness of the sensor output versus the measurement procedure, the positioning over different body parts and several patients. Early results of the on-going clinical trial revealed that the variance of RFID sensors is comparable with that of tympanic thermometer. The required compensation offset resulted rather patient-specific and can even vary for a same user along different days. Nevertheless, the on-chest placement is likely to mitigate this uncertainty.
2017 IEEE International Conference on RFID Technology & Application (RFID-TA), 2017
The UHF Radiofrequency Identification technology offers nowadays a viable technological solution ... more The UHF Radiofrequency Identification technology offers nowadays a viable technological solution for the implementation of low-level environmental monitoring of connected critical infrastructures to be protected from both physical threats and cyber attacks. An RFID sensor network was developed within the H2020 SCISSOR project, by addressing the design of both hardware components, that is a new family of multi-purpose wireless boards, and of control software handling the network topology. The hierarchical system is able to the detect complex, potentially dangerous, events such as the un-authorized access to a restricted area, anomalies of the electrical equipments, or the unusual variation of environmental parameters. The first real-world test-bed has been deployed inside an operational smart-grid on the Favignana Island. Currently, the network is fully working and remotely accessible.
2019 IEEE International Conference on RFID Technology and Applications (RFID-TA), 2019
Industry 4.0 is worldwide considered the upcoming revolution in manufacturing and industrial proc... more Industry 4.0 is worldwide considered the upcoming revolution in manufacturing and industrial processes. Automation, sensors and data analytics are expected to play a key role in improving performances of production and optimizing quality of objects in exercise. Great opportunities could be offered by RFID technology. Effective applications examples and case studies are in continuous growth. The paper introduces the possible architectures and the relative implementations in real scenario, together with the most critical challenges affecting communication and sensing performances.
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Papers by Sara Amendola