Demonstration of near-field capacitive standard communication bus for ultrathin reconfigurable sensor nodes

Abstract

This paper proposes a simple and effective method to wirelessly connect a microcontroller to a sensor using Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI). The transmission is done using capacitive interconnections. A pair of electrodes replaces the ohmic connection between the Integrated Circuits (IC). Our system is suited for prototyping ultrathin electronics and reconfigurable interfaces with sensors. A wireless communication with a packet error rate of 0.4 % between a microcontroller and a TC72 temperature sensor is demonstrated.