Portable positioning and communication device

Abstract

A portable positioning and communication device includes: a hybrid energy harvester integrating at least two or more energy sources such as thermoelectric, piezoelectric, triboelectric, vibration, and photovoltaic; a power management circuit for simultaneously charging a supercapacitor and a rechargeable battery; a sensor array including at least an inertial measurement unit and a barometer; multiple wireless transceivers including an ultrawideband transceiver, a short-range wireless transceiver, and a low-power long-range transceiver; and one or more processors configured to fuse positioning signals, detect events, encapsulate and encrypt sensing segments before and after the event, anchor event relay data to a blockchain ledger, and perform latency-tolerant mesh communication. The device can further provide tactile, visual, and / or auditory guidance in offline environments and extend its lifespan through energy-sensing scheduling.

Claims

1. A portable positioning and communication device, comprising: a composite energy harvester for converting at least two of thermal energy, mechanical energy, and light energy into electrical energy; a power management circuit including a maximum power point tracking module, wherein the power management circuit respectively directs the electrical energy to a supercapacitor and a rechargeable battery; a sensor array including at least an inertial measurement unit and a barometric pressure sensor; a plurality of wireless transceivers including an ultra-wideband transceiver, a short-range wireless transceiver, and a low-power long-range transceiver; a non-transitory memory for storing executable instructions; and at least one processor configured via the instructions to: generate a continuous position trajectory by fusing at least two of the data from a global navigation satellite system, UWB ranging, short-range wireless measurement, and inertial sensing; maintain a circular buffer to store multimodal sensing data, and, upon detection of an event, lock data segments before and after the event, calculate an encrypted hash, and securely store the data segments; Event relay data, including timestamps, hash values, and device identifiers, is anchored to a blockchain ledger, and the sealed data fragments are stored in a content-addressed repository for verification after multi-party authorization; a reporting frequency and at least one of the aforementioned wireless transceivers are selected based on an energy-sensing quality of service scheduler, and latency-tolerant store-and-carry-forward transmission is performed when the backbone network is unavailable, and relayed through a mesh network; and when no network is available, a guidance vector is calculated using the gradient of local sensing signals, and tactile, visual, and / or auditory cues are provided to the user.

2. The portable positioning and communication device as described in claim 1, wherein the power management circuit uses the supercapacitor for instantaneous loads and the rechargeable battery for long-term energy storage.

3. The portable positioning and communication device as described in claim 1, wherein the processor executes a time-model-enhanced Kalman filter to maintain continuous positioning through inertial pedestrian trajectory estimation during wireless signal interruption.

4. The portable positioning and communication device as claimed in claim 1, wherein the processor is adapted to apply a convolutional neural network to signals sensed by the inertial measurement unit for event detection, wherein the event detection includes falling, impact, or abnormal movement.

5. The portable positioning and communication device as claimed in claim 1, wherein the sensor array further includes a microphone, and the processor is adapted to perform offline keyword recognition on audio received by the microphone to identify distress words and trigger a circular buffer.

6. The portable positioning and communication device as described in claim 1, wherein the sealing includes data windows before and after the locking event, and the data is encrypted before storage.

7. The portable location and communication device as described in claim 1, wherein anchoring to the blockchain ledger includes digitally signing the hash value and submitting the signed hash and relay data to a permissioned decentralized ledger, and the sealed data fragment is stored in a content-addressed repository.

8. The portable positioning and communication device as described in claim 1, wherein the energy-sensing quality of service scheduler selects the return frequency and the wireless transceiver according to a cost function.

9. The portable positioning and communication device as claimed in claim 1, wherein the mesh network comprises at least one flood-based short-range mesh network and a low-power long-range multi-hop network, and the portable positioning and communication device can be relayed via an unmanned vehicle or backpack-type gateway.

10. The portable positioning and communication device as described in claim 1, wherein the device is configured to transmit half-duplex, low-speed voice communication over a mesh network and, when link quality is insufficient, the packet formatter automatically degrades the half-duplex, low-speed voice communication to text notes.

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