Design of an Energy-Autonomous Supply-Sensing Biosensor Platform Using Biofuel Cells and Human-Body-Communication Transmitter

The most challenging tasks in the development of Internet of Things (IoT) wearable healthcare devices are energy management and wireless communications. To address this issue, we have proposed supply-sensing biosensor platforms as a means to simultaneously obtain reliable energy from the human body and use it as the sensing target. In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of a self-powered supply-sensing biosensor platform with a human-body-communication transmitter that enables low-power and secure communications. To ensure reliable human-body communications with the low-voltage output of biofuel cells, we designed a custom integrated circuit employing a boosting circuit to boost the voltage from 200 mV to 720 mV with subthreshold complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (CMOS) circuitry.