Demo Abstract: Enabling Battery-less Wearable Sensors via Intra-Body Power Transfer

In this work, we present SkinnyPower, a concept of Intra-Body Power Transfer (IBPT) that wirelessly transfers power through human skin to operate batteryless wearable sensors. We envision a scenario, in which batteryless sensors placed on small body parts (e.g., on-finger, in-ear, and in-mouth) can obtain operating power from another body-worn energy sources (e.g., already existing batterypowered wearable devices such as a smartphone, smartwatch, or BandAid-like battery patch attached to the neck). To demonstrate and validate the concept of IBPT, we implemented a prototype consisting of 1) a wrist-worn, battery-powered power transmitter that sends alternating current through the human body and 2) a finger-worn, batteryless sensor device that operates solely on body-transferred power. Evaluations on five subjects show that we can reliably support the power of approximately 1 mW, which can be used to operate an embedded system, continuously collect sensor (accelerometer) data, and wirelessly transfer the collected data in real-time using Bluetooth Low Energy. We believe that the proposed system has great potential to transform current architectures and designs for body-area networks, promoting the development of innovative on-body sensors that would otherwise not be possible with on-device batteries.