A New Approach for Readout of Resistive Sensor Arrays for Wearable Electronic Applications

Resistive sensor arrays have been increasingly adopted in wearable electronic applications, which require low-complexity and low-energy circuits. However, current readout strategies for resistive sensor arrays require additional electrical components, such as transistors, diodes, multiplexers, op-amps, switches, current sources, and A/D converters, leading to a considerable increase in circuit complexity, power consumption, system instability, and crosstalk error. To address the problem, this paper proposes a new approach, which determines sensor resistance values by establishing and solving resistance matrix equations of sensor arrays. Unlike conventional approaches, it allows crosstalk currents in arrays to avoid additional components that are originally used for eliminating crosstalk currents and minimizing crosstalk error. Meanwhile, it takes advantage of on-chip resources of wearable platforms, thereby reducing redundant chips. It was implemented on a prototype of 10× 10 textile resistive sensor array, which was taken in a sensing cushion for sitting pressure monitoring of chair bound people. Experimental results on this array platform showed the new approach achieved a satisfactory accuracy (0.61% ± 0.41%), as well as a low crosstalk error (2.77% ± 0.61%). The fabricated sensing cushion also exhibited a relatively low pressure measurement error (6.30% ± 0.75%). Compared with other approaches, the proposed approach demonstrated the lowest circuit complexity on a microcontroller based wearable platform, and a sufficient sensor capacity. It is ideal for a wide range of applications like wearable or implantable sensing, presenting a reference for the design of low-complexity and low-crosstalk error wearable systems based on resistive sensor arrays.