Intelligent Vehicle Based Architecture for Real-Time Monitoring of Soldiers’ Health using MEMS Flexible Smart Skin Sensors

For the effective use of troops in a battlefield, it is very desirable that soldiers’ health be monitored in real time. Health parameters such as heartbeat/pulse rate, body temperature and acoustic waves of lungs provide some vital information about a person’s health. Thus real-time monitoring of health parameters of soldiers will allow someone to assess the current conditions of soldiers’ health. Real-time monitoring of health parameters will also allow someone to determine how rapidly the conditions of insured soldiers are deteriorating. As a result, timely help could be provided to save soldiers’ life. This paper presents an architecture that will use MEMS smart skin technology to fabricate different types of sensors. The smart skin can then be worn underneath the soldier’s uniform to monitor soldier’s health. RF transmitters can also be used to build and embed wireless transmitters into the smart skin. These wireless transmitters can be used to send the health parameters to a nearby vehicle. Thus, a vehicle will be able to monitor the health of soldiers within the vehicle as well as outside the vehicle. The vehicle can then send the information to a nearby camp using long-range wireless links. This paper proposes a detailed description of the MEMS smart skin technology to fabricate the sensors. Since health parameters contain private information of soldiers, these parameters must be sent using secure communication links from the soldiers’ smart skin to the nearby vehicle and then from the vehicle to a nearby camp. This paper also presents the techniques to establish secure links for sending private health information along the communication chain.