Design Consideration of Data Acquisition System

for Capacitive Plantar Pressure Insole

Reyhan Gustiandi1, Kristiana Asih
Damayanti2
Industrial Engineering Department
Parahyangan Catholic University
Bandung, Indonesia
1reyhan.gustiandi@gmail.com,
2krist@unpar.ac.id
Asep Nugroho1, Latif Rozaqi2, Kadek Heri Bahrudin
Sanjaya3 Department of Mechanical Engineering
Research Center for Smart Mechatronic National Taiwan University of Science and
National Research and Innovation Agency Technology
Bandung, Indonesia Taipei, Taiwan
1asep.nugroho.lipi@gmail.com
d10903811@mail.ntust.edu.tw
1ORCID 0000-0001-5021-1154

Abstract— Gait, the term used to describe the manner in
which people move while they walk, varies according to walking
style, aging, illnesses, and accidents. It can be used to predict the
diabetes course and disorders associated with the motor nervous
system. A capacitive pressure sensor (CPS) can be employed as
the plantar sensor when the user is walking. In order to improve
the linearity of CPS, a data acquisition system (DAQ) based on
the LC resonant principle that can decrease unanticipated EMI
has been developed. The result demonstrates that the change in
capacitance is linearly proportional to the pressure change.
However, parasitic capacitance, thermal noise, body
capacitance, and other factors still affect error and offset.
Finally, further work is needed to improve the capacitance
sensitivity of the plantar sensor.
Keywords—Plantar pressure, capacitive sensing, smart
insole, data acquisition system, resonant principle.
I. INTRODUCTION
The human foot is required to support weight while the
person is walking on two legs throughout their entire life.
When conducting regular activities, putting abnormal
pressure on the foot might generate pressure that isn't visible
under the skin, which can cause injury to the tissue and
inflammation in the affected area. In medical terms, this
condition calls foot plantar pressure which means force
exerted between the sole and the support plane when doing
normal locomotor movements, such as walking or standing.
According to a study, foot plantar pressure can happen to
everyone including obese children and adolescents, the
elderly, athletes also diabetes patients [1-4]. One of the
leading causes of lower limb amputation in diabetes patients
is the development of ulcers on the plantar surface, which is
directly linked to excessive plantar pressure[5]. Therefore, a
technique and technology required to detect early and identify
abnormal pressure that occurs during activity are crucial. Bio-
signals that are captured by wearable smart devices can be
utilized for the early diagnosis of diseases. Human daily
activities such as gait phase patterns can be employed as an
indicator of clinical diagnosis related to the healthy nervous
system. An insole plantar pressure system is a common
device that can sense gait phase detection, foot ulcers, and
flat-foot study [6-9].
Several typical sensing techniques were used for the
plantar pressure system i.e., piezoresistive, piezoelectric,
resistive, and capacitive. The amount of pressure that is being
measured is proportional to the signal that is produced by
these sensors, which can be either voltage or current. [10-12].
The piezoresistive material changes its electrical resistivity in
response to external pressure. It is commonly employed in
smart insole products. It has a basic design and a low price,
but it has a high hysteresis and a huge amount of creep, large
power consumption, and large temperature drift [13]. Unlike
piezoresistive which needs external power to power up the
sensor, the piezoelectric can independently generate and
accumulate the electric charge in certain solid materials when
mechanical force exposes it. The piezoelectric is low power
consumption and reliable rather than piezoresistive. Due to
the high impedance of these sensors and their susceptibility
to electrical interference, the signal-to-noise ratio produced
by them is rather poor [14]. The Force-Sensing Resistor
(FSR) is an exemplary resistive sensor. When pressure is
applied, the sensor detects the resistance of conductive foam
between two electrodes. As the conductive layer transforms
(i.e., its resistance drops) in response to pressure, the current
through the resistive sensor rises. However, the sensors have
the disadvantage of deforming over time as a result of the
daily force applied to them and changing their response over
time. Furthermore, their sensitivity decreases on a daily
usage, necessitating periodic recalibration. In addition, they
are unable to distinguish between load increases generated by
walking and weight changes [15]. Capacitive sensing is
another approach widely used for commercial products. It is
constructed with two electrode plates that are separated from
the dielectric material. By varying the distance between the
higher and lower electrodes, the device measures the pressure
applied. It offers a cheap and simple structure for large
manufacturing. However, the design data acquisition for
capacitive sensing is very challenging because it is very noisy
and sensitive [16-18].
As comparison, Table I is previous insole research that
have hugh of error that can be improved by developing data
aqquisition.
TABLE I. INSOLE READING ERROR ON PREVIOUS RESEARCH
No. Authors Error (%)
1 Denys J.C. Matthies [1] 8
2 Xiaohui Guo [2] 5.6
3 Teja Prakash Kakarla [3] 5.19
4 Simona Crea [4] 5
5 Roberto de Fazio [5] 4.8
In this paper, the authors demonstrate the comprehensive
data acquisition design for capacitive plantar pressure sensors
(CPS). Experimental work has been conducted to verify
capacitive sensing performance. This article will be
constructed as follows: Section II presents the sensing
mechanisms and electronic design considerations. The result

XXX-X-XXXX-XXXX-X/XX/$XX.00 ©20XX IEEE

 Fig 1. A CPS fabrication process.

and discussion will be reviewed in section III. Finally, we will 𝐶𝐶𝑋𝑋 ≈ (𝑉𝑉𝑂𝑂𝑂𝑂𝑂𝑂 − 1) 𝐶𝐶𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟 (3)
conclude our work in section IV.
The RC time constant scheme measured the capacitor
voltage 𝑉𝑉𝑐𝑐 and calculates the time constant τ to get the
II. SENSING INSOLE AND DATA ACQUISITION SYSTEM
This section will describe two main components i.e., the capacitance value that is shown in Fig 4. By putting 𝑅𝑅𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟 as a
sensing insole and data acquisition system. The main goal of
reference resistor, the unknown capacitor 𝐶𝐶𝑋𝑋 can be derived as
sensing insole design is to get a reliable result with minimum
follow (4).
cost. Additionally, the data acquisition design must be
compact and comfortable as a wearable device. 𝑉𝑉
𝑒𝑒 −𝑡𝑡/𝑅𝑅𝐶𝐶𝑋𝑋 = �1 − 𝑉𝑉 𝐶𝐶 � (4)
𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖
A. Insole Sensing
The fabricated process of capacitive sensing insole is
shown in Fig 1. The first layer is the waterproof cloth that is
cut to fit into the insole shape. The copper plates are placed
into the second and fourth layers which are separated by
rubber soles as the dielectric material. It was selected since the
rubber sole has a huge elasticity. Other materials also can be
used as long as the elasticity can accommodate foot pressure.
When the pressure is applied to the insole during activity, the
distance between the copper plate will change. The
relationship between the distance of two plates with the
capacitance value follows (1) and is illustrated in Fig 2. Where Fig 4. The illustration capacitive value between two copper plate.
𝜀𝜀𝑟𝑟 , A , and d are dielectric permittivity, area of copper plate,
and distance between two plates, respectively. Rubber soles
materials have dielectric permittivity of 2.8~3 × 10-12 C2/Nm2.

𝐴𝐴
𝐶𝐶 = 𝜀𝜀𝑟𝑟 (1)
𝑑𝑑

B. Data Acquisition System (DAQ)

Fig 5. A block diagram of capacitor voltage divider circuit
There are three schemes to measure capacitance i.e., the
capacitive voltage divider, the RC time constant, and the LC
resonator. Fig 3 represents the capacitive voltage divider
circuit where the high-frequency excitation voltage source
generated the AC current that passes through the capacitor, it
would become a capacitive impedance. If we put 𝐶𝐶𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟 as a
capacitor reference, the unknown capacitor 𝐶𝐶𝑥𝑥 can be
calculated as follow (2) and (3). As a note, the rectifier and
low pass filter (LPF) were used for getting DC voltage and
noise rejection.
𝐶𝐶𝑋𝑋
𝑉𝑉𝑂𝑂𝑂𝑂𝑂𝑂 ≈ 𝐶𝐶 (2) Fig 6. A block diagram of RC time constant circuit
𝑋𝑋 +𝐶𝐶𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟
 The FDC2214 is Integrated Circuit (IC) made by Texas
Instrument. It is one of the Capacitance to Digital Converter
(CDC) that uses an LC resonant principle as shown in Fig 5.
The LC resonant approach employed an external LC resonator
connected to an unknown capacitor to generate a specific
resonant frequency. By comparing between digital clock
stream and frequency reference that came from the internal
oscillator, the specific resonant frequency ( 𝑓𝑓𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶 ) could be CPS
determined. By knowing 𝑓𝑓𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶 , the unknown capacitor (𝐶𝐶𝑋𝑋 ) Analog
CDC ESP-32
would be determined by (5). Mux

1
𝐶𝐶𝑋𝑋 = − 𝐶𝐶𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟
𝐿𝐿𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟 (2𝜋𝜋⋅𝑓𝑓𝐶𝐶𝐶𝐶 )2
From the three capacitance sensing approaches, only an
RC time constant and LC resonant had been accommodated
into IC commercial products. The IC that used the RC time
the constant scheme was cheaper than the LC resonant.
However, it was prone to noise from electromagnetic
interference (EMI) due to the broadband sensitivity. In this
study, the FDC2214 was chosen with consideration that it had
robustness from EMI. To reduce costs as low as possible, a
multiplexing strategy was applied. The overall block diagram
of the DAQ system was revealed in Fig 6. In the first step, the
ESP-32 microcontroller gives an order to the multiplexer to
select which capacitive sensor was wanted to read. After that,
the FDC2214 read the selected sensor, then the data was sent
to ESP-32 through Inter-Integrated Circuit (I2C)
communication bus. Finally, ESP-32 makes sorting and
smoothing data before the set of data was forwarded via Wi-
Fi to the computer host. The overall system of CPS included
with the data acquisition system (DAQ) were shown in Fig 7.
(5)
DAQ
Fig 10. A CPS connected to DAQ
III. RESULT AND DISCUSSION
To evaluate the performance of the prototype, two steps of
tests had been conducted. The first test was to measure the
fixed capacitor as a reference and the result was shown in
Table I I. There were several fixed capacitors as the references
had values 2~ 39 pF. Every channel (Ch1-Ch8) had a different
margin of error depending on how big the capacitor value was.
The plate placement and isolation from human body
capacitance are greatly affecting into linearity. To achieve
better linearity, the top layer of cloth has an important role in
reducing the human body's capacitance effect. Moreover, the
datasheet mention that the FDC2214 has a narrow band range
so it has the ability to reject unpredictable EMI that come from
the environment such as thermal noise, radiation, light
emission, and vibration. Only a certain range of CPS values
has a high sensitivity level that can be read correctly.
Otherwise, it will give an error when the capacitance value is
out of range. In addition, the parasitic capacitance that
occurred in a multiplexer component and other passive
components has contributed to an offset value.

TABLE II. MEASUREMENT FIXED CAPACITOR

Fixed (pF)
Capacitor (pF) Ch1 Ch2 Ch3 Ch4 Ch5 Ch6 Ch7 Ch8
Fig 8. A block diagram of LC resonant circuit. 2.00 2.43 2.85 2.91 3.77 3.15 3.03 3.08 4.01
5.00 5.45 6.07 5.94 6.48 6.19 6.34 6.37 7.01
8.00 8.30 8.69 8.83 9.26 9.17 9.41 9.52 10.11
10.00 10.14 10.41 10.33 11.12 11.44 11.61 11.63 11.80
13.00 12.59 12.95 12.65 13.54 12.59 12.95 12.65 13.54
15.00 13.87 14.94 14.48 15.72 15.43 15.33 15.90 16.04
18.00 16.75 17.41 16.83 17.35 18.52 18.93 18.58 18.91
22.00 19.45 20.47 20.48 21.36 22.05 21.52 22.05 22.52
24.00 20.96 21.75 21.74 22.90 23.58 23.17 22.80 24.24
39.00 30.11 31.03 25.30 31.29 29.40 30.54 31.17 31.25
TABLE III. MARGIN OF ERROR
Capacitor (Error %)
(pF) Ch1 Ch2 Ch3 Ch4 Ch5 Ch6 Ch7 Ch8
2.00 17.53 42.28 45.44 88.37 57.47 51.71 54.01 100.47
5.00 8.18 21.47 18.74 29.68 23.80 26.83 27.44 40.30
8.00 3.65 8.63 10.41 15.78 14.59 17.59 19.02 26.39
10.00 1.36 4.07 3.26 11.21 14.40 16.10 16.34 17.98
13.00 3.22 0.42 2.72 4.14 3.12 0.42 2.72 4.14
15.00 8.13 0.40 3.47 4.80 2.87 2.18 6.03 6.92
18.00 7.45 3.30 6.53 3.62 2.91 5.16 3.22 5.08
22.00 13.10 6.93 6.92 2.90 0.22 2.17 0.25 2.35
24.00 14.48 9.39 9.43 4.59 1.76 3.48 4.99 1.00
Fig 9. A block diagram of overall data acquisition system 39.00 29.54 20.44 35.13 19.76 24.61 21.69 20.08 19.86

Fig 11. Capacitances and pressures relationship
TABLE IV. MEASUREMENT PRESSURE
Pressure (pF)
(kPa) Ch1 Ch2 Ch3 Ch4 Ch5 Ch6 Ch7 Ch8
22.12 0.17 0.98 1.05 0.73 0.03 0.49 0.46 0.80
44.23 0.17 1.14 1.12 0.80 0.04 0.53 0.51 0.87
66.35 0.22 1.19 1.24 0.85 0.07 0.55 0.54 0.92
88.46 0.24 1.24 1.24 0.88 0.10 0.57 0.57 0.95
110.58 0.35 1.29 1.51 0.93 0.22 0.60 0.59 0.99
132.70 0.35 1.37 1.61 0.98 0.42 0.61 0.61 1.03
154.81 0.38 1.45 1.68 1.04 0.49 0.73 0.62 1.05
176.93 0.43 1.48 1.74 1.09 0.49 0.76 0.64 1.11
R Squared 0.950 0.972 0.962 0.996 0.909 0.916 0.957 0.985
Intercept 0.109 0.969 0.921 0.694 0.122 0.439 0.457 0.777
Gradient 0.002 0.003 0.005 0.002 0.004 0.002 0.001 0.002
The process of determining the range of CPS values is
important to determine Lref and Cref properly. If the range of
CPS values is out of range, it creates a false measurement.
Another aspect such as inadequate current flow to drive
oscillation and settling time also can lead to a false value. As
shown in Table III the DAQ only had the best performance to
sense 13-22pF. Furthermore, a value that is out of the range
from 13-22pF will give a huge error.
Fig 8 represents the relationship between pressure and
capacitance is relatively linear and has an R-square (R2) in the
range of 0.909~0.996. The R2 indicates how close the
trendline linearity is. On the other hand, the gradient shows
how close the sensitivity is. For instance, channel 5 has R2
0.909 which means low linearity compared to other channels.
However, the channel 5 gradient is 0.004 which mean has high
sensitivity compared to other channels as shown in Table IV.
Because overall sensitivity is quite low that it means the kind
of material that is used as a CPS needs to be upgraded. In
future work, the dielectric permittivity and electrode size are
needed to consider carefully. Furthermore, the approach
proofed that the DAQ system based on the LC resonant
principle can improve the sensor performance compared to the
previous work on Table I.
IV. CONCLUSION
The design of a multi-channel data acquisition for
capacitive plantar sensors has been investigated. It employed
the LC resonant principle to track the change in the
capacitance value plantar sensor. Several aspects such as
parasitic capacitance of active/passive components, current
flow to drive oscillation, and settling time must be considered
to minimize offset and error value. The results shows in the
measurement range can reduce the margin of error up to 2%.
In future work, a better CPS material was needed to increase
the sensitivity of the system and reduce the error.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This research was funded by the Indonesian government
through Rumah Program Grant 2022.
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