Electromagnetic-based Wearable Biosensor for Non-Invasive Blood Glucose Monitoring Systems

Diabetes is one of the leading causes of death globally and is considered one of the greatest health challenges of the 21st century. The development of a low-cost non-invasive blood glucose monitoring system would be life-changing for diabetic patients. We propose to develop a first-of-its-kind wearable electromagnetic(EM)- based biosensor that can safely and accurately detect the changes in the dielectric properties (e.g., glucose level) of the blood through the transmission and reflection of EM waves. The biosensor transmitting waves inside the human body is suggested to be a miniaturized antenna operating at the microwave band (e.g., sub-6 GHz band) to allow proper wave penetration through skin, fats, and muscles. The reflected data from the human body (i.e., arm) will be processed and analyzed to continuously estimate the blood glucose level. The measured glucose level will be wirelessly transmitted to a mobile phone via Bluetooth. The main challenge of this project is to associate the changes in the reflected EM waves off the human body with the blood glucose fluctuations. It is expected that the proposed EM-based system will overcome the challenges associated with the current blood glucose monitoring systems available in the market that are based on chemical interaction between the blood and some chemical agents. In addition, other challenges associated with the current technologies include the very high cost, inaccuracy, and short operational time as most commercial sensors need to be replaced by a new one every 14 days which imposes a financial burden on the patient. Hence, the proposed EM-based sensing system is expected to address most of the current mentioned challenges.