An Asynchronous Multi-Sensor Micro Control Unit for Wireless Body Sensor Networks (WBSNs)

Abstract

In this work, an asynchronous multi-sensor micro control unit (MCU) core is proposed for wireless body sensor networks (WBSNs). It consists of asynchronous interfaces, a power management unit, a multi-sensor controller, a data encoder (DE), and an error correct coder (ECC). To improve the system performance and expansion abilities, the asynchronous interface is created for handshaking different clock domains between ADC and RF with MCU. To increase the use time of the WBSN system, a power management technique is developed for reducing power consumption. In addition, the multi-sensor controller is designed for detecting various biomedical signals. To prevent loss error from wireless transmission, use of an error correct coding technique is important in biomedical applications. The data encoder is added for lossless compression of various biomedical signals with a compression ratio of almost three. This design is successfully tested on a FPGA board. The VLSI architecture of this work contains 2.68-K gate counts and consumes power 496-μW at 133-MHz processing rate by using TSMC 0.13-μm CMOS process. Compared with the previous techniques, this work offers higher performance, more functions, and lower hardware cost than other micro controller designs.

An Efficient Micro Control Unit with a Reconfigurable Filter Design for Wireless Body Sensor Networks (WBSNs)

“…As compared with six previous designs, this work achieves supporting four various biomedical sensors, which is four times of previous works [9–13] and the same as our previous work [8]. To be able to compare with the previous works [8,9,11,12], this work was synthesized by 0.18-μm and 0.13-μm processes.…”

“…As compared with six previous designs, this work achieves supporting four various biomedical sensors, which is four times of previous works [9–13] and the same as our previous work [8]. To be able to compare with the previous works [8,9,11,12], this work was synthesized by 0.18-μm and 0.13-μm processes. The functions in this work includes the slop compression, power management (PWM), asynchronous interface, ECC, register bank, reconfigurable filter, and UART interface, which are much more than previous designs [8–13].…”

“…The microcontroller [7] with its functions of power management, signal processing, and interfacing between the ADC and transceiver is an important device in a WBSN system. Researchers have proposed a number of low-cost and high-performance microcontrollers [8–11]. However, while micro-control units [10,11] are designed as digital signal processors (DSPs), and have high performance with regard to processing signals, they also consume a huge amount of power.…”

“…However, while micro-control units [10,11] are designed as digital signal processors (DSPs), and have high performance with regard to processing signals, they also consume a huge amount of power. In our previous works [8,9], an adaptive power controller was designed into a micro control unit (MCU) and used to develop a low power WBSN system [9]. A low-cost VLSI architecture for a micro control unit [8] with multi-sensor nodes was also designed for a WBSN system, with the functions of data compression, asynchronous interface, ECC, and power management.…”

“…In our previous works [8,9], an adaptive power controller was designed into a micro control unit (MCU) and used to develop a low power WBSN system [9]. A low-cost VLSI architecture for a micro control unit [8] with multi-sensor nodes was also designed for a WBSN system, with the functions of data compression, asynchronous interface, ECC, and power management.…”