Smart, low power, wearable multi-sensor data acquisition system for environmental monitoring

The wireless sensor network is becoming a technology of huge interest for a wide variety of applications. Despite the technological developments of smart sensing, issues related to system integration, sensor miniaturization and especially low-power sensors interface circuitry design, still represent major technical challenges. This paper describes the prototype of a smart, low power, wearable system that can be used for environmental monitoring. The wearable system uses an array of sensors connected to a central processing unit with firmware for continuously monitoring. The data acquisition process has been performed via Bluetooth with a Graphical User Interface (GUI) designed within LabVIEW. This system will be also interfaced with an Android device as an alternative for ease of access and portability. This work is meant to prove basic concepts about smart sensing in the context of wearable systems along with Bluetooth communication, data acquisition as well as mobile computers.