Location tracking system using wearable on-body GPS antenna

Abstract

An on-body location tracking system is developed and integrated with a wearable GPS antenna. Such system is beneficial in human location tracking of patients and elderly within a radius of 1 km. The system consists of a wearable antenna, a GPS module, a low cost microcontroller, two RF modules and a local monitoring system. A user equipped with the GPS antenna, GPS module and a RF transmitter is able send his/her location to the local monitoring system via a RF receiver. The proposed wearable antenna is validated to be safe for human use in terms of specific absorption rate (SAR). This antenna was then incorporated into the complete prototype and tested. Several suggestions for future improvements are also proposed and discussed.