National Conference on Recent Trends in Engineering & Technology

Study of Microcontroller Cores for Medical Instrumentation Applications

U.S.Deopurkar1 B C Goradiya2, D M Patel,3 1,2,3 Associate Professor, Electronics Department, B V M Engineering College, V V Nagar. usd2112@gmail.com, bcgoradiya@bvmengineering.ac.in, dmp_bvm@yahoo.co.in,

Abstract- Advancement in the field of computational hardware technology facilitates lot of evolution in the medical instrumentation systems. The other technological evolution like VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) technology, Microprocessor, and Digital Signal Processing (DSP), Discrete Signal controller (DSC) also, drastically affect the design of such system in terms of size, speed and cost of the system. The embedded cores architectural development also effect the performance in terms of speed of execution and low power consumption of such system. The programmable system also plays important role for designing of embedded cores. One can focus on selection of appropriate controller among various options available in the market for specific application improves great in the system performance. Keywords: Health Monitoring, Microcontroller, Intelligent Systems.

performance in terms of power, speed and cost of the system. There are varieties of controller unit available like microcontrollers, Programmable system on chip, Digital Signal Processor and soft core which can be utilized on specialized programmable hardware like FPGAs and CPLDs. In this paper we surveyed different verities of controller available in the market with its different capability to handle the system requirements. In the following subsequent section we focus briefly on the specific category of the controller which enhancing the performance of the systems.

I. Introduction Intelligent system requires smart controller for performance improvement of the system. Medical instrumentation also require intelligent controller for more sophisticated facilities to improve the performance [1]. Behind the intelligent system there is an intelligent controller plays an important role. In the block diagram shown in figure 1, the medical instrumentation application requires sensor for sensing physiological signal from the patient body [2-4]. After getting electrical signal from the sensor output the signal is amplified and conditioning for appropriate signal strength. Since the intelligent digital controller requires digital data to further processing there is Analog to Digital Convertor (ADC) chip. The controller here is responsible for overall handing of the signal like recording, displaying and sending to the remote places. Above mansion functionality of the system requires different architecture of the controller to handle different activity like speed, data storage programmability and power consumption of the system. The performance of the system depends on the processing power and the computational power of the central controller unit. Depending on the central controller selection one can improve the system

Figure. 1 II. Microcontrollers

The advancement in the field of microprocessor offers the systems with lot of embedded peripherals in a single chip[5][6]. The microprocessor with on chip internal peripherals results it to a single chip microcontroller. The microcontroller now days available with memory incorporated on chip. The power requirement is also low without affecting the performance of the controller. The on chip resources in a single chip reduce the cost of the embedded systems. The microcontrollers now days available with lot of peripheral on chip like Analog to Digital Convertor (ADC) and DAC into the same chip [7]. By using those peripherals one can reduce the interfacing task on the PCB, and reduce the cost of the system. The programming of such varieties of microcontrollers can be done by the Electronic Design

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National Conference on Recent Trends in Engineering & Technology

Automation Tools (EDA) which is provided by the controller manufacturer. The EDA tools used to generate specific hex code is known as cross-compilers. To day cross-compilers are available and due to that the microcontrollers can be programmed in the higher level languages. The cross-compilers offer the programming in the higher level language like C, C++, and JAVA. So, virtually user can work with any microcontrollers, however the user has to learn about the internal architecture and peripherals detail about that particular microcontroller. Here the assembly language mnemonics is not required to know. Even some of the cross-compilers also support simulator for the respective devices for testing various software module without investing any hardware. III. Programmable System on Chip (PSoC): The on chip peripheral can also be incorporated with controller into the chip itself by programmable capability by software tools provided by the chip manufacturer. One such device from cypress semiconductor is PSoC [8]. In PSoC we can configure the programmable peripherals like ADC, DAC, UART etc. The advantage of such device is that the peripherals incorporated into device that much power consume by the chip, so one can save the overall power consumption of the system. The PSoC device can be configured by software tools called PSoC designer from the cypress semiconductor. The PSoC block incorporated with the software tools doesnt required external interfacing of the peripheral with the controller and one can reduce the PCB designing task which is required. The other advantage of using PSoC device into the system is one can lead the time to market of the designing of the system. IV. DSP controller:

solution of the microcontrollers and DSP processor results into digital signal controllers (DSC). V. FPGA/CPLDs:

The advancement in VLSI technology also improves a lot in the design of the embedded systems. Earlier in this field the programmable logic arrays (PLAs) and programmable logic devices (PLDs) were available. Those programmable devices had limited capabilities to develop the digital logic. Now days VLSI technology offers complex programmable logic devices (CPLD) and field programmable logic devices (FPGA) [11][12]. These devices offer total system requirements into a single chip by configuring by hardware descriptive languages (HDLs). The program can be erased and reprogram again as per user requirements. Here, the programmable logic devices can be programmed by the electronic design automation (EDA) tool which offers the programming in the various HDL options. The CPLD/FPGA based embedded core offers dynamic change of algorithm and reprogrammed it many times. So, depending upon the requirement of wearable biomedical system one can select appropriate microcomputer in the system design. The improvement in the software EDA tools also support the configuration of such programmable devices in Graphical User Interface (GUI), so one can configured without knowing HDL language. VI. ARM controllers

The other choice of the microcomputer for the controller of the systems is the digital Signal Processor (DSP) processors. The architecture of microcontroller and DSP is differed in the sense that the some digital processing algorithm implemented in the hardware architecture [9][10]. The algorithm which is implemented in the hardware improves the lot in the speed of operation. The DSP The limitation of the microcontrollers for the real time processing like speech and image processing due to sequential execution of the instructions so, it can be overcome by the DSP processor. The various real-time algorithm are incorporated into the hardware of the DSP chip one can go for embedded core where systems requires such faculties. Again, here also manufacturer offer crosscompilers for the programming the DSP processor. Even some of the manufacturers offer the integrated

In the recent trends of architectural design of the controllers Advanced RISC Machines (ARM) plays an important role in speed of operation and power consumption [13]. The concurrent execution of the instructions improves the speed of operation of the system. The improvement in the speed of execution of the instructions improves the real time processing of the signal. The real time processing required for speech processing and image processing application for medical instrumentation. Texas instruments offer also the combination of ARM and DSP together in a single chip [9]. By using such combination of the central controller one can optimized the performance of the embedded medical instrumentation. VII. Conclusion

In this paper we have discussed about various aspects of the designing a medical instrumentation system for health monitoring by using controller based intelligent systems [14]. The evolution in the field of embedded technology improves the system performance day by day. In future we expect a tremendous improvement in the wearable biomedical

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National Conference on Recent Trends in Engineering & Technology

systems. The development in the technology improves the quality of human life day by day; however the designed system must be safe to the human being and should be environment friendly. This care must be taken into consideration by the designer of the system.
REFERENCES [1] Frank Vahid, Tony Givargis. Embedded System Design A Unified Hardware /Software Introduction by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. [2] R.S. khandpur, Handbook of Biomedical Instrumentation, Second edition, TATA McGraw HILL, New Delhi. [3]J. Malmivuo and Plonsey, BioElectromagnetism-Principles and Oxford Applications of Bioelectric and Biomagnetic Fields. University Press. New York, 1995. [4] J. G. Webster, Medical Instrumentation application & Design, 3rd ed. John Wiley & Sons, August 1997. [5] V. Vaid, A silicon Locket for ECG Monitoring, Thesis, M.Tech. Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, Mumbai, 2003. [6] M. Shojaei-Baghini, R. K. Lal, and D. K. Sharma, A Low-Power and Compact Analog CMOS Processing Chip for Portable ECG Recorders, in Asian Solid State Circuit Conference, A-SSCC05, Hshinchu, Taiwan, Nov. 2005. [7] www.atmel.com for Atmel microcontrollers . [8] www.cypress.com for PSoC devices. [9] www.TI.com for Digital Signal Processing. [10] www.analog.com for Digital Signal Controller. [11] www.xilinx.com for FPGA/CPLD soft cores. [12] www.altera.cpom for FPGA/CPLD soft cores. [13] www.nxp.com for ARM devices. [14] Ricardo Isais, Khoi Nguyen, Gabriel Perez, Roberto Rubio, and Homayoun Nazeran, A Low-cost Microcontroller-based Wireless ECG-Blood Pressure Telemonitor for Home Care, in Proceedings of the 25th Annual International Conference of the IEEE EMBS, Cancum, Maxico. September 17-21, 2003.

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