WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY
Small form, big innovation: Engineering and IP in the smart ring revolution
By Oran Friar, Grace Tang, & Ahmad Hussain, Reddie & Grose S
mart rings have emerged as a fast- growing category within the wearable community. Their appeal lies in offering continuous monitoring in an extremely compact, unobtrusive form. As a result, they present a compelling alternative to more established devices like wrist-worn watches and health trackers. However, engineering challenges that are driving innovation in sensing, power management and device integration.
A central challenge is the integration of multiple sensing capabilities into a highly constrained form factor. Modern devices are expected to monitor a range of physiological parameters including heart rate variability, skin temperature, blood oxygen levels and sleep quality. Delivering accurate and reliable measurements requires advanced sensor miniaturisation alongside robust system-level design to maintain performance under tight spatial and thermal limitations. Power management is another critical constraint. The size of a ring drastically restricts battery capacity, placing emphasis on the need for ultra-low-power component
Oran Friar
Grace Tang
achieve this, engineers must optimise duty cycles and implement intelligent processing strategies to extend operational lifetime. The use of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and other low-energy communication protocols is essential to balance connectivity requirements with power consumption.
“ Given the
convergence in device functionality, protecting solutions can offer a advantage
Mechanical and materials engineering considerations are equally important. Smart rings must withstand continuous daily use, including exposure to mechanical stress, moisture and temperature variation. At the same time, they must remain comfortable to wear while ensuring consistent sensor contact with the skin. enclosure design, component layout and signal integrity—particularly for optical and bioelectrical sensing systems.
”
Figure 1: Worldwide patent publications per year related to wearable rings and wearable devices; data
20 MAY 2026 | ELECTRONICS FOR ENGINEERS
Also important to note is that connectivity and data handling are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and smart rings typically function within a broader ecosystem with smartphones and cloud-based platforms. This raises additional complexities around data security and transmission support more complex health insights. As the market matures, there is a clear shift from general wellness tracking towards clinically relevant monitoring. Achieving “clinical-grade” performance requires improvements in sensor accuracy, calibration techniques and signal processing algorithms. Increasingly, this is supported by advanced analytics, including machine learning, to extract meaningful insights from physiological data. Consequently, smart ring development sits at the intersection of hardware engineering, embedded systems and data science.
This rapid technical evolution is mirrored in global patent activity. Over the past decade, patent publications relating to wearable rings have increased markedly, with particularly
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50
