Research Article
Testing an Arduino-Based Approach for Full-Duplex Voice
Communication and Body-Parameter Sensing Electronics for
Use with Smart Clothing
Miroslav Joler , Andrej BerkariT, and Valentin Klen
Faculty of Engineering, University of Rijeka, Rijeka HR-51000, Croatia
Correspondence should be addressed to Miroslav Joler; mjoler@riteh.hr
Received 27 December 2018; Revised 24 March 2019; Accepted 22 April 2019; Published 8 May 2019
Academic Editor: N. Nasimuddin
Copyright © 2019 Miroslav Joler et al. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License,
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
In this paper, we discuss the state of the art and trends in the feld of smart clothing development and show two circuits
that we assembled in search for adequate solutions. Te circuits are based on Arduino concept and achieve a full-duplex voice
communication and real-time publishing of temperature measurement to a designated web page. Te characteristics of the two
circuits are discussed as well as the prospects for their future improvements.
1. Introduction
Development of communication networks and microelec-
tronics is bringing us opportunities to work towards devel-
opment of smart clothing. Garment considered as smart
clothing is envisioned to be equipped with various wireless
sensors and communication capabilities towards remote
entities. Sensors should enable either measurement of body
parameters such as the heart rate [1, 2], blood pressure,
glucose level [3, 4], or air quality [5] and wirelessly transmit
the measured data to some main control unit (MCU) that is
also being worn on a body or being outside it such as a mobile
phone, which would then display them and/or store them,
make further calculations using them, and alert the wearer
and other interested parties about possibly concerning values
of some body parameters, or forward them to a remote center,
such as a cloud storage. Communication links should provide
reliable and secure data transmission from the sensors to
MCU in diverse environments and under diferent body
motions and provide a range from a few tens of centimeters
to several meters or tens of meters, depending on the scenario
of the particular application.
Te integration of the sensors and communication chips
into the clothing should satisfy the requirements of being
mechanically robust against various natural strains during
body movement, being noninvasive to make wearing the
clothing comfortable enough, be resistant to penetration of
moisture, be water repellent, be either washable or easy to
remove and mount before and afer washing, respectively,
have a good thermal stability, and, depending on the appli-
cation, have a power supply secured over a long enough
period of time. Sensors measuring body parameters and
transferring that information to a mobile phone have recently
appeared on the market in the form of watches equipped with
a few sensors that typically monitor heart rate and track the
physical activity by means of the number of steps walked,
possibly including GPS-acquired locations, calories burned,
and sleep cycles, for example. In the near future, clinical-
accuracy blood pressure measurement is expected to become
available on a wrist watch as well [6]. Succeeding that, we can
expect it to be integrated with the already present features, for
more complete monitoring. Most recent applications transfer
sensors data from a wrist watch to a wearer’s mobile phone
via a Bluetooth connection [7]. Such “ftness tracker” watches
are typically powered on the principle of a mobile phone—by
a regular periodic charging using a USB cable. However, in
spite of their attractiveness, this kind of wearables does not
match the notion of smart clothing because the key devices
and their functions are placed outside the clothing.
Tere have also recently appeared specialized pieces of
garment in the form of either a special shirt, belt, or socks
that should help athletes or recreational players to monitor
Hindawi
International Journal of Antennas and Propagation
Volume 2019, Article ID 8598912, 8 pages
https://doi.org/10.1155/2019/8598912