Design of Wireless Power Smart Personal Protective Equipment for Industrial Internet of Things

Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) is crucial in safeguarding against workplace hazards. However, incidents still occur due to improper PPE usage. With the rise of Industry 4.0 and increasing industrial automation, efforts aim to develop systems for real-time monitoring of PPE. We have developed a proof-of-concept of wireless-powered smart PPE that integrates commercial off-the-shelf electronics with PPE. The smart PPE consists of a power harvesting system, an Ultra-High Frequency Radio-Frequency Identification (UHF RFID) tag for tracking and data communication, and a microcontroller directly supporting capacitive sensing used to recognize the correct wearing of the PPE. A common UHF RFID reader interrogates and powers the smart PPE at the same time using the EPCglobal Class-1 Generation-2 communication protocol. The power harvester is more than 30 % efficient at -10 dBm, and the capacitive measurement shows a peak consumption of less than 100 µA at 1.8 V. Finally, the smart PPE was tested in a realistic scenario. The test was conducted by distancing the smart PPE from the reader from 1 m to 4 m in 1 m steps. The results showed that the wireless power supply and the communication data are feasible up to 4 m. The proposed smart PPE is an ultra-low-power wearable solution that easily integrates into industrial infrastructure and is easily miniaturized, ensuring a significant improvement in workplace safety by enabling real-time monitoring of correct PPE usage.