Analyzing the battery lifetime of a remote pain monitoring system

Analyzing the battery lifetime of a remote pain monitoring system#

You are working as an R&D engineer in a new startup that develop a wearable facial mask for pain monitoring based on the paper IoT-Based Remote Pain Monitoring System: From Device to Cloud Platform.

Technical description#

  • eight channel electromyography sensor sampling at 1 kHz

  • each sample 16 bit

  • transfers data to a cloud server via a gateway in real-time

  • weighs ~39 g, so long term monitoring comfortable

  • Li-Po battery

  • ADC (analog digital converter) consumes 8.2 mW

Assumptions#

Pain monitoring system:

  • The device supports both cellular and Wi-Fi

    • NB-IoT, LTE Cat NB2, LTE band 20

  • Receiver and transmitter antenna are isotropic

    • Warning: This does not mean that every antenna in the scenarios are isotropic. The gateway antenna may be directional.

  • Miscellaneous losses 5 dB

Problem#

Analyze whether a 2000 mAh battery would be sufficient for the following scenarios and corresponding what-ifs. Come up with ideas for the individual scenario how to improve the battery life.

Your hardware designer colleague already mentioned:

Changing the battery model is not an option 😐

Scenarios:

  1. Hiking: A week long hiking trip Sweden. The nearest base station is in LOS and never further than 10 km away.

    • What if your colleague wants to change the number of channels to 12?

  2. City trip: The person strolls around town. The user is never further than 200 m from the nearest base station.

    • What if the base station is 400 m away?

  3. Hygge at home: The person is in the town, but home in the lowest floor of a four floor apartment . There is a base station on top of another building 500 m away. This base station is on the other side of the building, so the signals have to penetrate two concrete block walls.

  4. Hygge at home Wi-Fi: Compared to 3, Wi-Fi at 2.4 GHz is used. The furthest distance is 20 m to the router.

    • What if the user has shut down 2.4 GHz channel and only uses 5 GHz?

Checklist ☑️#

  • The names and matriculation numbers of the contributing students are on the first page.

  • Single PDF max ~15 pages.

  • English or Danish.

  • Contains at least the following sections

    • Motivation for the problem, e.g.,

      • What is your role in the company?

      • Why do you think this problem matters for the product, company and patient?

      • How will/can your report’s outcome influence the product’s design?

    • Four sections named after the scenarios. Each of the four sections has a subsection with the corresponding What-if.

    • Recommendations after your analyses. Is the device performance acceptable in all of the scenarios including what-ifs? Do you have suggestions

  • You may add additional sections.

  • Your sections are interconnected. It should not have sudden interruptions in the reading flow. In other words, there is a guiding theme – a red thread (den røde tråd).

  • You wrote about your assumptions and reasoning, which may not be obvious to the reader, e.g.,

    I assumed 2 dB extra miscellaneous loss due to interference of a nearby base station

    I used Hata model for suburban environments, because the scenario describes a rural area

  • You used a reference for each non-obvious claim.

    • Example:

      a 1900 MHz signals experiences a 60 dB loss through a glass window with one triple silver coating 2016, Vitro.

  • You cited your references inline and citations are clickable.

    • The reader should be able to access your reference by clicking a link right after your claim. This makes fact-checking by the reader much easier.

  • Using formulas

    1. the formula is presented

    2. each formula variable are described if not described before

    3. the variables are substituted with the values.

    4. the result is calculated

  • It is clear whether a value is in dB or linear.

  • Link budget calculations contain a table which summarizes the components

  • Not only the writer, but additionally someone else read your piece, ideally someone outside of your group.