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October 2014 • The PCB Magazine 21 Bluetooth (BLE) connection to a smartphone as shown in Figure 2. However, the drive is on for greater range and longer battery life, and this combination not only represents the potential for completely new applications for wearables, but also is presenting the need for higher forms of integration compared to the conventional PWB/discrete component approach. One of the major issues facing team/contact sports in the USA today is the long-term effect of concussions and sub-concussive head impacts. The impact of a soccer header is on the order of magnitude of a hard punch (there's no knock- out because the effect of the punch is magni- fied by the ganglia in the jaw, whereas a header utilizes the thick bone and relatively insensitive areas of the forehead/skull), and the evidence is growing that neurodegenerative diseases linked to dementia, memory loss and depression are triggered by repetitive head trauma. The num- ber of people playing sports with high con- cussion rates such as soccer, basketball, rugby, American football, and ice hockey is over 700 million worldwide, and the best way to mini- mize the exposure these athletes have to brain injury is to identify a concussion once it has been sustained and allow the individual proper rest to recuperate, as well as reduce exposure to repetitive low-impact (sub-concussive) events through detection and consequent modifica- tions of technique and athletic conditioning. The devices coming onto the market to ad- dress this need consist of an accelerometer ca- pable of responding to multiaxis movements of the head and supporting electronics. While some systems simply trigger an alarm on the headset, more advanced designs store data for wireless transmission to a base station such as WEARABLE ELECTRONICS continues figure 2: fitness tracker/sleep monitor. (source: transsiP, misfit wearables)