Developments and Drivers of Low-Cost Smartphone Instrumentation

Abstract

Over the past decade, smartphones and various offshoot wearables have become indispensable consumer devices attracting considerable attention beyond telecommunications providing accessible edge computing and data generation into the Internet. Particularly, sensing technologies are rising, and advanced analytics both at the edge and exploiting online computing and camera imaging are growing. The data generated from these are already being collated, stored, processed, and used by various commercial enterprises, raising considerable regulatory and ethical challenges across multiple sectors. At the core of all this remain simple cost-effective sensor technologies and the work toward that. This review examines these sensor technologies to highlight challenges being solved to achieve full-spectrum Internet of Things (IoT), using advances in sensing and material processing including the pivotal role of additive manufacturing in accelerating deployment testing and understanding of these sensors and diagnostic elements. These sensors are the points from which the intelligent IoT “feels”, detects, and makes ideally real-time assessments, creating a global sensory network founded on light that, to our present knowledge, knows no natural equivalent, potentially turning the earth itself into the skeleton of an intelligent organism. It introduces the sensor side of the coming IoT, and while the focus is on smartphone technologies, the principles apply to the majority of IoT network edge technologies.