Wearable Radiofrequency Metasurface for Smart-Bandages

Chronic injuries are a major health concern affecting worldwide population. In this context, smart dressings can be an effective solution to monitor the wound inflammation state. This paper presents a radiating system to be integrated into the wound bandage as a low-cost and high-sensitive sensor. The proposed hardware configuration consists of an actively fed RF probe and a planar 2×2 metasurface made of double-layer spiral resonator unit cells. This particular design allows to enhance the retrieved signal and, thus, the overall system sensitivity. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed configuration, full-wave simulations incorporating a biological layered phantom were carried out to compare healthy and inflamed tissues. The identification of the inflammatory state is performed by analyzing the amplitude variations of the input impedance recorded by the fed probe. The numerical results verified the proposed approach, confirming both the ability to determine the presence of the inflammatory state and the position of the disorder. Consequently, the proposed sensor is a promising alternative to evaluate clinical issues and allow better treatment decisions in wound healing.