Hardware Design of Earbuds with Biometric Sensors and ear-EEG
Abstract (300 words maximum)
Recently there has been a burst of wearable electronic devices from VR headsets to AR glasses to smart watches and biometric sensing rings. One recent patent from Apple was on earbud-based sensors for biometric sensing as well as EEG signals from the ear. There is an Ear-EEG device called MN8 that measures EEG signals in the ear while listening to music but has only one channel per year with limited applications and a high cost. OpenBCI has ear EEG with no audio and a bulky circuit that connects on the back of the head.
This project is on developing an in-house earbud hardware for EEG and biometric sensing. The hardware includes circuit design, microcontroller board layout, antenna, battery, and interface between the hardware and software.
The circuit design required amplifiers due to the micro-scale amplitudes of the EEG signals, and filters to filter out noise and separate the EEG signals based on frequency.
A priority for the microcontroller was to minimize the size as much as possible. Based on the antenna, microcontroller, charger, and signal board the possible designs are a 2-board solution or a 3-board solution for the layout.
A nRF53 chip was used to interface with the hardware, allowing us to send data from the user’s brain to a phone via Bluetooth. Utilizing BLE and the onboard ADC, analog signals can be sent as digital signal values to the phone for analysis.
For the battery, 3V lithium-ion batteries. Analysis of the tradeoff between size and gain of a planar, inverted-F antenna versus a chip was conducted to find the optimal solution for the ear-EEG hardware.
Recently, the first and only antenna measurement chamber has been acquired at KSU, which will be utilized to test the antennas for the earbud. Future work includes PCB fabrication and testing.
Academic department under which the project should be listed
SPCEET - Electrical and Computer Engineering
Primary Investigator (PI) Name
Hoseon Lee
Hardware Design of Earbuds with Biometric Sensors and ear-EEG
Recently there has been a burst of wearable electronic devices from VR headsets to AR glasses to smart watches and biometric sensing rings. One recent patent from Apple was on earbud-based sensors for biometric sensing as well as EEG signals from the ear. There is an Ear-EEG device called MN8 that measures EEG signals in the ear while listening to music but has only one channel per year with limited applications and a high cost. OpenBCI has ear EEG with no audio and a bulky circuit that connects on the back of the head.
This project is on developing an in-house earbud hardware for EEG and biometric sensing. The hardware includes circuit design, microcontroller board layout, antenna, battery, and interface between the hardware and software.
The circuit design required amplifiers due to the micro-scale amplitudes of the EEG signals, and filters to filter out noise and separate the EEG signals based on frequency.
A priority for the microcontroller was to minimize the size as much as possible. Based on the antenna, microcontroller, charger, and signal board the possible designs are a 2-board solution or a 3-board solution for the layout.
A nRF53 chip was used to interface with the hardware, allowing us to send data from the user’s brain to a phone via Bluetooth. Utilizing BLE and the onboard ADC, analog signals can be sent as digital signal values to the phone for analysis.
For the battery, 3V lithium-ion batteries. Analysis of the tradeoff between size and gain of a planar, inverted-F antenna versus a chip was conducted to find the optimal solution for the ear-EEG hardware.
Recently, the first and only antenna measurement chamber has been acquired at KSU, which will be utilized to test the antennas for the earbud. Future work includes PCB fabrication and testing.