High Density Resistive Array Readout System for Wearable Electronics

Abstract

This work presents a wearable sensing system for high-density resistive array readout. The system comprising readout electronics for a high-density resistive sensor array and a rechargeable battery, was realized in a wristband. The analyzed data with the proposed system can be visualized using a custom graphical user interface (GUI) developed in a personal computer (PC) through a universal serial bus (USB) and using an Android app in smartphones via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), respectively. The readout electronics were implemented on a printed circuit board (PCB) and had a compact dimension of 3 cm × 3 cm. It was designed to measure the resistive sensor with a dynamic range of 1 KΩ–1 MΩ and detect a 0.1% change of the base resistance. The system operated at a 5 V supply voltage, and the overall system power consumption was 95 mW. The readout circuit employed a resistance-to-voltage (R-V) conversion topology using a 16-bit analog-to-digital converter (ADC), integrated in the Cypress Programmable System-on-Chip (PSoC®) 5LP microcontroller. The device behaves as a universal-type sensing system that can be interfaced with a wide variety of resistive sensors, including chemiresistors, piezoresistors, and thermoelectric sensors, whose resistance variations fall in the target measurement range of 1 KΩ–1 MΩ. The system performance was tested with a 60-resistor array and showed a satisfactory accuracy, with a worst-case error rate up to 2.5%. The developed sensing system shows promising results for applications in the field of the Internet of things (IoT), point-of-care testing (PoCT), and low-cost wearable devices.

Keywords

• wearable
• flexible
• embedded system
• high-density resistive array
• Bluetooth Low Energy
• point-of-care testing