Wirelessly powered miniature wearable vital signs monitor

Wireless, wearable health and activity monitoring devices are becoming an interesting solution for early detection of health problems and remote surveillance of post-incident patients. While efficient and precise signal acquisition and processing are readily available, the biggest challenge in widespread adoption of wearable monitoring devices lies in their energy supply. The tradeoff between the device lifetime and its size implies that a device that is comfortably small has lifespan not allowing for prolonged use, especially if continuous data transfer is required. In this work, we propose a novel system that employs a long range inductive link to recharge a small battery on-board the wearable device. The application of wireless energy transfer in this case is motivated by comfort of use and reliability rather than necessity. In case of wireless power transfer, intermittent battery recharging is transparent for the user, thus very comfortable.