Wireless Sensing Technology for Monitoring of Food Health in Harsh Environments (MEALTHY)

Starting date
December 17, 2007
Duration (months)
30
Departments
Computer Science, Department of Engineering for Innovation Medicine
Managers or local contacts
Fummi Franco

In most of the human health and safety application fields, it is crucial to provide reliable remote sensing and
transmission. For instance, monitoring food health during cooking would be a key feature for reducing very common
social diseases. Another example is rescue on case of fire where detecting temperature, life signs and locating gas
spills is crucial to improve the effectiveness of the intervention. In this context, sensor nodes may have to work in
harsh environments, such as at a very high temperature (over 200° C) and in gas or liquid medium where the
dependability of the system must be guaranteed. This impose several challenges for the design of sensor nodes,
concerning reliable sensing device design, energy management, robust radio frequency (RF) communication, hermetic
and biocompatible packaging. This calls for the design of very innovative devices, that are characterized by a
heterogeneous architecture as they require the integration into a single system-in-package (SiP) of different types of
devices (e.g., sensors, RF devices, memories, microcontrollers, etc.) within a biocompatible and hermetic package, in
particular when the SiP has to be in contact with food. Furthermore, no high-end peak technologies must be used in this
context if the final price of the chip must be compatible with a spread diffusion of it. The MEALTHY project aims at
the design of a low-cost, biocompatible, miniaturized, hermetic sensor node working at a very high temperature,
minimizing power consumption exploiting advanced energy harvesting and management techniques, while
guaranteeing high dependability and adaptation capabilities to hostile conditions.

Sponsors:

7PQ VALUTATI POSITIVAMENTE
Funds: requested
Syllabus: EUROPA - Progetti Europei

Project participants

Research areas involved in the project
Sistemi ciberfisici
Network architectures

Activities

Research facilities

Share