A Fully Integrated On-Skin RFID EMG Sensor

We designed, fabricated, and tested a UHF RFID-based wireless system for electromyographic sensing, differently from the usual RFID employment on TAGs. The design leads to a fully integrated system, not electromagnetically interfering with the analogic part of the board, thus preserving the very low signal coming from the electromyographic activity of the muscles. Whilst wireless transmission usually represents the greater power contribution, our solution has the advantage of a compact design to easily implement data transfer passive communication, without onboard energy consumption. We optimized the analog output of the EMG sensor to properly interface the input of the analog to digital converter that is embedded in the RFID chip. A test exploiting three hand gestures confirmed the expected results, and the collected and transmitted EMG signal is compliant with the same signal sampled with an oscilloscope, thus promoting further advancements to reduce the overall system dimensions and the analog power requirements