Self-Powered Position Monitoring System Based on Insole-Type Wearable Triboelectric Nanogenerator and Bluetooth Beacon

With the advancement of internet of things and wireless sensing technology, the need for personnel track and position monitoring are greatly increasing. Commercial global positioning system (GPS) and Global system for mobile communications (GSM) position methods cannot meet the demand for low power consumption and three-dimensional indoor position monitoring. Herein, a self-powered position monitoring system (SPMS) based on an insole-type wearable triboelectric nanogenerator (IW-TENG) and Bluetooth beacon for human kinetic energy harvesting and sustainable position monitoring is proposed. The SPMS consists of an insole-type wearable triboelectric nanogenerator, an energy management module (EMM), and a Bluetooth low energy (BLE) beacon module. Benefitting from the multilayers structure, a maximum energy of 120 mu J per step can be harvested by the IW-TENG with EMM for a typical adult. By every 3-4 steps, SPMS can transmit Bluetooth signals to obtain the location information. A single BLE signal transmission consumes only 136 mu J, and the transmission distance can reach 100 m. The SPMS is applied to intelligent attendance in office rooms and shows great prospects in intelligent navigation and trajectory tracking in local area network.