Designing a wireless communication system for smart sensor shorts in football

Abstract

Decreasing injuries in football is a topic of interest for the KNVB and KNHB. To reach this goal, the use of smart sensor pants is researched. The data will be used to develop models for finding injury risk factors that are related to movements. Currently, the system is capable of reading out the IMUs and storing the data on an SD-card, for post-analysis of the data. As next step, the communication link should be implemented, for real time feedback to the football players. The design of an efficient communication system in terms of power, size, and reliability, is quite a big task. By looking at similar research to body-worn devices, it is noted, that most devices deal with a 10 times lower data rate than the current device. On top of that, it is noted that the absorption of the body is causing problems on the link reliability. Based on these observations, it is decided to focus the research of this Thesis on the reduction of the data load, and the optimization of the transmission part of the smart sensor pants. The Thesis is split into two parts, the first part will show the use of lossless data compression. The second part will start with showing the benefit of using a patch antenna over a dipole antenna and continues by showing the benefit of using a dual antenna configuration over a single antenna configuration. To be more specific, the first part of this Thesis starts by comparing different lossless data compression algorithms, from which the FELACS algorithm is chosen as most suited. This algorithm is then implemented on the current hardware and tested on data from the smart sensor pants in a realistic football scenario. These results show an average compression ratio of 43 %-45 % in the most intensive 5-minutes of a football game, with a minimum of 38 % in an interval of 10 s. To improve the compression algorithm, an adjustment to the FELACS algorithm is proposed. This adjustment is theoretically tested and shown to outperform the FELACS algorithm with a higher compression ratio. In the second part, the use of a dual antenna configuration is discussed, whereby the use of a patch antenna is compared to a dipole antenna. It will be shown, that a dual antenna configuration can significantly improve the signal strength around the player, resulting in an almost isotropic radiation pattern, using pattern diversity. On top of that, this form of pattern diversity is observed to increase the reliability of the link, using switched combining. Moreover, it will be shown that a patch antenna will be more suited for this application, due to the higher gain in the front, and the robustness against interference when placed close to a conducting material. In summary, the two main contributions of this Thesis, are the reductions in data load, and the testing and verification of the dual patch antenna configuration. These contributions provide the basis for the communication part of the smart sensor pants.