Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) is a private university located in&nbsp;Tamil Nadu, India. Founded in 1984, as Vellore Engineering College, the institution offers 20 undergraduate, 34 postgraduate, four integrated and four research programs. It has campuses in Vellore, Amravati, Bhopal and Chennai.

VIT is one of the top ranked private universities in India according to NIRF, THE and QS Rankings.&nbsp;Govt. of India has recognized&nbsp;VIT, Vellore as an&nbsp;Institution of Eminence. This has allowed VIT to take independent quality initiatives and move up in world ranking.

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VIT University

Department of Sensor and Biomedical Technology

This work presents a metal-insulator-semiconductor (MIS) structure based on nickel oxide (NiO) showing negative differential resistance (NDR) properties. The Ni / NiO / HfO 2/ Ni layers structure was obtained by multiple sputtering steps and was then characterized by electrical measurements and other relevant methods. The electrical characteristics of the MIS structure were studied as a function of the oxide layer thickness. The observed NDR behavior could be attributed to a combination of the band-bending and a tunneling current contribution. © 2019, The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society.

World University root node

School of Electronics Engineering

Vellore Campus

Journal of Electronic Materials

Negative Differential Resistance (NDR) Behavior of Nickel Oxide (NiO) Based Metal-Insulator-Semiconductor Structures

Accurate measurement and monitoring of respiration is vital in patients affected by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus – 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Patients with severe chronic diseases and pneumonia need continuous respiration monitoring and oxygenation support. Existing respiratory sensing techniques require direct contact with the human body along with expensive and heavy Holter monitors for continuous real-time monitoring. In this work, we propose a low-cost, non-invasive and reliable paper-based wearable screen printed sensor for human respiration monitoring as an effective alternative of existing sensing systems. The proposed sensor was fabricated using traditional screen printing of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) composite based interdigitated electrodes on paper substrate. The paper substrate was used as humidity sensing material of the sensor. The hygroscopic nature of paper during inhalation and exhalation causes a change in dielectric constant, which in turn changes the capacitance of the sensor. The composite interdigitated electrode configuration exhibited better response times with a rise time of 1.178s being recorded during exhalation and fall time of 0.88s during inhalation periods. The respiration rate of sensor was successfully examined under various breathing conditions such as normal breathing, deep breathing, workout, oral breathing, nasal breathing, fast breathing and slow breathing by employing it in a wearable mask, a mandatory wearable product during the current COVID-19 pandemic situation.Thus, the above proposed sensor may hold tremendous potential in wearable/flexible healthcare technology with good sensitivity, stability, biodegradability and flexibility at this time of need. IEEE

Department of Instrumentation

School of Electrical Engineering

Fulltext

IEEE Sensors Journal

Flexible, Highly Sensitive Paper-Based Screen Printed MWCNT/PDMS Composite Breath Sensor for Human Respiration Monitoring

European Heart Journal

Modified New Zealand rabbit model produces severe aortic valve calcification and stenosis via extracellular membranous particles

Hybridizing the triboelectric and electromagnetic generator shows excellent potential in harvesting the water wave energy in a wide frequency range from low to high upon water wave motions. The triboelectric component works on low-frequency accelerations, and at the high-frequency accelerations, the electromagnetic components work efficiently. The hybrid generator is composed of a triboelectric and electromagnetic generator, which generates electrical output independently upon the same mechanical motions. The device is composed of a tubular structure with the inner part having a magnet and Kapton as triboelectric layers, and at the outer part, coils were wounded on either side, activating the electromagnetic part. The same magnet movement activates the triboelectric component when it moves over the Kapton, and during its motion inside the coil, activates the electromagnetic part. The tube-shaped hybrid generator produces an electrical output under the triboelectric component of 20 V and 100 nA with an output power of 85 nW. The single electromagnetic generator unit delivers a determined output of 3 V and 11 mA with an output power of 4 mW. The hybrid configuration generates a higher output of 7 V and 20 mA compared to the individual components. The device is then used as an oil spill detector to detect oil spill at sea with the change in conductivity of the seawater with the generated electrical output from the device. This work renders the innovative approach of scavenging blue energy as well as showing an excellent prospect for enabling the self-powered oil spill detection and marine rescue systems. © 2020 American Chemical Society

ACS Applied Electronic Materials

Encapsulated triboelectric−electromagnetic hybrid generator for a sustainable blue energy harvesting and self-powered oil spill detection

Water is abundantly present on Earth. Water waves have the unique feature of being random and irregular. The impact of water waves can be utilized to derive power by employing a triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG). Fishing is one of the main occupations in our society, and fishermen risk their lives every day for their occupation. During fishing, they face many obstacles such as heavy wind, fog, and tides, and these scenarios force them to lose their fishing nets in the sea. The loss of fishing nets not only leads to financial damage to the poor fishermen but also adds plastic pollution to the water bodies. A low cost, user-friendly approach to finding their fishing nets is highly desirable. Here, a self-powered smart fishing net-tracking buoy is developed for identifying fishing nets via integration of a Smart Buoy-Triboelectric Nanogenerator (SB-TENG), a power management unit, Arduino, and a Bluetooth controller using a smartphone. By scavenging blue energy, the SB-TENG device generates an open-circuit voltage of 900 V, and a short-circuit current of 11 μA and integration of multiple units of SB-TENG further enhances the performance. The SB-TENG was studied and demonstrated as a feasible power source that can commute instantaneous remote switching operation of LEDs. Moreover, by combining SB-TENG with Arduino and the Bluetooth controller, it acts as a self-powered wireless control system. This work demonstrates an effective method for scavenging blue energy and its potential application as a user-friendly, cost-effective, and self-powered smart fishing net tracking buoy. Copyright © 2020 American Chemical Society.

ACS Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering

A Sustainable Blue Energy Scavenging Smart Buoy toward Self-Powered Smart Fishing Net Tracker

A configurable self-calibrated power efficient five-bit error correction code is proposed to correct both single bit random and burst errors up to five bits; providing 100% error correction probability with crosstalk avoidance. It can also correct higher-order error up to 9 bits with an error correction probability tolerance of 73% for on-chip interconnection links. Single error correction and double error detection with extended Hamming code (22,16) is utilised along with standard triplication error correction methods in the proposed code. Self-calibration algorithm and data stream rerouting block are integrated into the error correction code to achieve power efficiency. Reliability, link power consumption, and link swing voltage are estimated using an analytical model used in a network-on-chip. Area, power, and delay of the codec are obtained using Synopsys tools utilising UMC 90 nm technology. The proposed method provides 32-73% power saving and 22.3-60.6% delay reduction with negligible area overhead compared with the state-of-the-art works. Estimated results prove that it provides a 40.5-50% reduction in link swing voltage and link power consumption compared with the state-of-the-art works. The proposed code is more appropriate for on-chip interconnect links where it provides high reliability and low swing voltage with high error correction capability compared with existing codes. © The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2020

IET Computers and Digital Techniques

Power efficient error correction coding for on-chip interconnection links

Different audio environments require different settings in hearing aid to acquire high-quality speech. Manual tuning of hearing aid settings can be irritating. Thus, hearing aids can be provided with options and settings that can be tuned based on the audio environment. In this paper we provide a simple sound classification system that could be used to automatically switch between various hearing aid algorithms based on the auditory related scene. Features like MFCC, Mel-spectrogram, Chroma, Spectral contrast and Tonnetz are extracted from several hours of audio from five classes like 'music,' 'noise,' 'speech with noise,' 'silence,' and 'clean speech' for training and testing the network. Using these features audio is processed by the convolution neural network. We show that our system accomplishes high precision with just three to five second duration per scene. The algorithm is efficient and consumes less memory footprint. It is possible to implement the system in digital hearing aid. © 2020 IEEE.

Proceedings of the 2020 IEEE International Conference on Communication and Signal Processing, ICCSP 2020

Acoustic Scene Classification in Hearing aid using Deep Learning

Key Message: The new NB scope aids in better visualization of the scalp and blood collection and analysis at bed side. Objective: Caesarean section rates and inherent complications are on the rise all over the world. One way to avoid a caesarean is to measure fetal scalp blood lactate levels. The methods available to visualize fetal scalp, obtain the blood sample and perform the blood test are separate, cumbersome and expensive, needing a certain level of expertise. We propose a device that incorporates all the steps of obtaining a fetal scalp blood lactate into one sleek, easy to use device. Methods: The initial design, 3-D print and was tried on mannequin. After ethics committee approval, the prototype was experimented on patients in labour with singleton live fetus in cephalic presentation with no evidence of distress. Results: There were (n = 9) patients recruited. There were (n = 5) primigravida and (n = 4) multigravida all of whom were in active labour. Parity did not seem to influence ease of instrumentation. Of the (n = 9) mothers (n = 2) had meconium-stained liquor and the rest (n = 7) had clear liquor, meconium-stained liquor did not affect visualization. The mean time taken to collect the sample was 184.11(± 33.04) seconds. Conclusion: The Neeraj-Bhaskar (NB) scope is an easy to use, affordable device that can be used time and again to decide on cases where emergency caesarean section can be avoided due to fetal distress. © 2020, Federation of Obstetric & Gynecological Societies of India.

Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology of India

An Integrated System for Fetal Scalp Visualization, Blood Collection and Analysis

Purpose: The paper aims to focus on implantable antenna sensors used for biomedical applications. Communication in implantable medical devices (IMDs) is beneficial for continuous monitoring of health. The ability to communicate with exterior equipment is an important aspect of IMD. Thus, the design of an implantable antenna for integration into IMD is important. Design/methodology/approach: In this review, recent developments in IMDs, three types of antenna sensors, which are recommended by researchers for biomedical implants are considered. In this review, design requirements, different types of their antenna, parameters and characteristics in medical implants communication system (MICS) and industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) bands are summarized here. Also, overall current progress in development of implantable antenna sensor, its challenges and the importance of human body characteristics are described. Findings: This article give information about the requirements of implantable antenna sensor designs, types of antennas useful to design implantable devices and their characteristics in MICS and ISM bands. Recent advancement in implantable devices has led to an improvement in human health. Originality/value: The paper provides useful information on implantable antennas design for biomedical application. The designing of such antennas needs to meet requirements such as compact size, patients’ safety, communication ability and biocompatibility. © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Sensor Review

A review on antennas for biomedical implants used for IoT based health care

Triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) is a predominant method for converting ubiquitous mechanical energy into electrical energy using the triboelectric effect. Enhancement of charge generation in the TENG device is a major challenge to be addressed. Recently, laser surface patterning (LSP) has been proven to be an effective technique in improving triboelectrification. LSP process uses the photophysical mechanism for the formation of micropatterns. In this work, micro patterns such as circle, line and X patterns were developed on the PET substrate using continuous-wave fibre laser of wavelength 1064 nm. The LSP process has enabled the development of consistent architecture with more efficient surface morphology as compared to conventional surface replication and few lithography processes. The line patterned TENG has shown better triboelectric performances compared to pristine and other patterned TENG devices. The triboelectric short circuit current, open circuit voltage and power density of the line patterned TENG device was 0.46 μA, 36 V and 0.8 μW/cm2 respectively. The mechanical endurance of the line patterned TENG device was demonstrated for 10000 cycles without any significant loss in the performance. The maximum electrical energy generated from TENG device was stored in 1 μF commercial capacitor and three blue LEDs were powered up using the stored energy. Furthermore, theoretical simulation has been carried out to confirm the effective output performance of patterned TENG device. Hence, the proposed TENG has been found to be highly reliable and suitable for powering the low power electronic devices. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd