This article examined how different time and task management information widgets affect time perception across modalities. In mentally demanding office environments, effective countdown representations are crucial for enhancing temporal awareness and productivity. We developed TickSens, a set of information widgets with different modalities, and conducted a within-subjects experiment with 30 participants to evaluate the five types of time perception modes: visual, auditory, haptic, as well as the blank and the timer modes. Our assessment focused on the technology acceptance, cognitive performance and emotional responses. Results indicated that compared to the blank and the timer modes, the use of modalities significantly improved the cognitive performance and positive emotional responses, and was better received by participants. The visual mode had the best task performance, while the auditory feedback was effective in boosting focus and the haptic mode significantly enhances user acceptance. The study revealed varied user preferences that enlightened the integration of these widgets into office.

An ultrawideband multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) circularly polarized (CP) cube antenna is proposed for wireless communication and sensing of Internet of Things. This antenna comprises an ultrawideband grounded criss-cross radiator, four square parasitic patches, and a four-port feeding network. Following the inverted-F radiation principle, a criss-cross patch is incorporated with its center grounded. Surrounding it, four small exciting patches are strategically positioned to drive via electromagnetic couplings. The ultrawideband radiation characteristics are analyzed based on the mode behaviors predicted by characteristic mode analysis (CMA). The introduction of four square parasitic patches between the radiator and the ground plane leads to an improvement in impedance matching. To create a single-port CP antenna element, a four-port feeding network with equal magnitude, but spaced 90° apart in phase, is connected to the radiator. The MIMO diversity performance is assessed through metrics like envelope correlation coefficient (ECC), diversity gain (DG), mean effective gain (MEG), and channel capacity loss (CCL). To validate the design concept, a prototype of the cube antenna is fabricated and assembled, demonstrating the ability to radiate right-hand circularly polarized (RHCP) waves. The measured results indicate impressive performance metrics: a −10-dB impedance bandwidth of 2.2–7.8 GHz (112%), a 3-dB axial ratio bandwidth of 2.1–7.3 GHz (110.6%), a realized gain ranging from 5.6 to 9.5 dBic, and a radiation efficiency between 65% and 88.5%. Additionally, the port isolation exceeds 30 dB, and the ECCs are below 0.009.

A wearable dual-band and dual-circularly polarized (DBDCP) antenna using a dodecagonal truncate pyramid-shaped artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) reflector for gain enhancement is proposed in this paper. Firstly, a compact deformed quadruple inverted-F antenna (QIFA) with meander-line-shaped radiation patches has been developed as the radiator. Then, to make this QIFA generate different circular polarization (CP) radiation characteristics in two frequency bands, two feeding networks are adopted for realizing lefthand and righthand CP properties simultaneously. Lastly, a novel AMC reflector is employed to improve antenna performance. The presented DBDCP antenna was fabricated to realize lefthand CP (LHCP) in the frequency band of 3.5-4.0 GHz (13.3%) and righthand CP (RHCP) in 5.4-5.9 GHz (8.8%). Due to installation of the AMC reflector, the gains of the antenna are enhanced by about 3-5.3 dB in the lower CP band. The achieved peak gains are about 11.9 dBic and 10.5 dBic at 3.5 GHz (LHCP) and 5.8 GHz (RHCP), respectively. Meanwhile, the antenna’s specific absorption rate (SAR) has been greatly reduced, which meets well the IEEE wearable device standards. It is found that the proposed DBDCP antenna is a promising candidate for the applications of 5G, industrial scientific medical (ISM), WLAN (5.8-GHz), and WiMAX (3.5-GHz) systems in industrial IoT scenarios.