Body-Area-Networks in Europe

Tue Jul 30 19:28:44 CDT 2013

Here is an article on the development of Body-Area-Networks (BAN) in 
Europe.
73s
André N4ICK

  Enhanced Wireless Technology For Body Implants And Sensors

WISERBAN 
<http://prodimages.vertmarkets.com/image/62c25373/62c25373-8ae5-493a-9f13-98e71a2cfe45/original/wiserban.jpg>
Body implants such as pacemakers and hearing aids have been used to 
counter organ dysfunction for decades. The WISERBAN project is making a 
giant leap in their development: aiming to provide smarter 
communications among such devices, with reduced size and lower energy 
consumption.
In the near future, people affected by health issues as varied as 
Alzheimer, diabetes, hearing loss, heart failure or even missing limbs 
could all have something in common: a smart, efficient, in-body or 
on-body device that makes their daily life easier and more enjoyable. To 
this end, the development of tiny and ultra-low-power wireless 
communications is key. It allows these devices to communicate changes in 
conditions and adjust treatments accordingly. Only limited autonomy and 
wireless connectivity can be achieved using today's wireless solutions 
because of their size and power consumption. Conscious of the fact that 
this limitation is currently holding back 'wireless body-area network' 
(WBAN) capability for use in lifestyle and bio-medical applications, the 
WISERBAN project brings together major medical-device manufacturers, 
research institutes and chip makers to overcome this obstacle.
WISERBAN is focusing on the extreme miniaturisation of 'body-area 
network' (BAN) devices. It touches on the areas ofradio-frequency (RF) 
communications, 'Microelectromechanical systems' (MEMS) and miniature 
components, miniature reconfigurable antennas, miniaturised and 
cost-effective system-in-package (SiP), ultra-lowpower MEMS-based radio 
system-on-chip (SoC), sensor signal processing and flexible 
communication protocols.
During an interview with research*eu results magazine, the project 
coordinator, Dr Vincent Peiris tells us more about the project's 
contribution to improving state-of-the-art technology, and how its 
outcomes will enhance comfort and access to ICT for impaired and 
disabled people of all ages. Dr Peiris is Section Head for RF and Analog 
IC Design at the Centre Suisse d'Electronique et de Microtechnique 
(CSEM) in Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
What are the main objectives of the project?
There is a growing resort to next-generation wireless body-area networks 
for smarter medical, healthcare and lifestyle devices. Networking 
sensors worn on the body or implanted in the body are being developed, 
and a key enabler of such technology resides in tiny and ultra-low power 
wireless communications. In this context, WISERBAN aims to develop an 
ultra-miniature wireless microsystem comprising a 2.4GHz radio, a 
microprocessor for the sensor data processing, and RF MEMS devices for 
improved radio performance, all combined in a 4 x 4 x 1mm3 
system-in-package with power consumption of around a few milliwatts. The 
target is to achieve devices that are 50 times smaller, and with power 
demands that are 20 times lower than existing consumer products, which 
generally rely on classical solutions like Bluetooth.
What is new or innovative about the project and the way it is addressing 
these issues?
The WISERBAN consortium is unique as it is federated around four leading 
industrial partners - SORIN for cardiac implants, Siemens Audiology 
Solutions for hearing aids, Debiotech for insulin pumps, and MED-EL for 
cochlear implants - which together bring in stringent and 
market-oriented requirements. Their products are fairly different 
because some are implanted while others are worn on the body. Also, 
targeting health care comes with constraints that are not necessarily 
the same as for lifestyle demands. Nonetheless, it was possible to 
define commonalities with respect to the wireless communication layer, 
which allowed us to engineer a dedicated radio specification and 
architectural breakdown for driving the current technology developments.
The two major innovations brought by the WISERBAN device are its unique 
low-power radio architecture and its size: 4 x 4 x 1mm3. At the radio 
level, we created a unique combination of ultra-deep-submicron 
'complementary metaloxide-semiconductor' (CMOS) circuits with a 
heterogeneous set of MEMS devices - such as 'bulk acoustic wave' (BAW) 
RF resonators, 'surface acoustic wave' (SAW) RF filters and lowfrequency 
'silicon resonators' (SiRes)-whereas today's approach relies on 
CMOS-only chips which require several external and bulky passive 
components such as crystals and RF filters.
The joint usage of MEMS with CMOS enables much smaller SiP integration 
when compared to modules using CMOS chips, as well as the engineering of 
disruptive radio architectures which use the advantages of MEMS devices 
to compensate for limitations in the CMOS circuits - and vice versa. 
This allows for a highly efficient start-up time for the transceiver 
section, thereby enabling rapid wake-up of the radio. This is crucial 
for low power operation as it eliminates the unnecessary current 
consumption that normally arises from the slow start-up of classical 
radio architectures.
In parallel, we developed a miniaturised SiP approach for achieving the 
4 x 4 x 1 mm3 target while being affordable from a commercial point of 
view. Current solutions, like three-dimensional (3D) silicon 
integration, suffer from technical complexity and are rather costly for 
silicon foundries to implement in their flows. With WISERBAN, the CMOS 
and MEMS devices are embedded within very tiny epoxy laminates, and 
these flat two-dimensional (2D) SiPs can then be stacked together by 
solder-bumping to realise tiny 3D SiPs. The cost-effectiveness and 
inherent modularity of this SiP platform allows it to be easily 
configured to address the variety of end-user requirements.
What are some of the difficulties you have encountered and how did you 
solve them?
WISERBAN is about pushing innovation into many wireless technologies, 
such as miniature antennas, radio chips, digital-processing circuits and 
MEMS devices, but also software for system control and for wireless 
sensor networking. System integration - which is about getting them to 
work together in a unique demonstrator or a product - is thus a very 
complex task and a major project challenge. It has required the 
development of rigorous top-down specification and architecture 
breakdown, making sure that each block takes into account its environing 
conditions and interfaces with other components. Research teams across 
several EU countries naturally tend to concentrate on the scientific 
challenges of their own blocks taken individually, so system integration 
has also been about ensuring efficient and regular interactions between 
them. Creating an enabling and stimulating environment for proper system 
integration and playing the role of system integrator has been a major 
task for CSEM as scientific coordinator of the project.
A concrete example is the successful realisation -at the first 
attempt-of the WISERBAN SoC, which is the system integration of several 
technology 'bricks' like MEMS and radio circuits with a 'digital signal 
processor' (DSP) on a single silicon die in 65nm CMOS. On the other 
hand, other technology bricks, such as the SiRes MEMS, have proved very 
challenging to achieve because an entirely novel fabrication, processing 
and encapsulation flow has to be invented, and this has proved to be 
lengthier than expected in order to deliver devices giving satisfactory 
performance. To solve such issues, synergistic interaction with another 
EU-funded FP7 project - GO4TIME2 which deals with similar MEMS issues - 
was established to deliver contingency technology items for the WISERBAN 
SiRes MEMS.
What are the concrete results from the research so far?
These include the first version of WISERBAN SoC, which integrates on a 
single chip in 65nm CMOS a complete MEMS-based transmitter and a digital 
signal processor of the icyflex family, and was functional at the first 
attempt. Currently the teams are working to integrate the remaining 
blocks for the final version of the SoC.
Another very interesting result is the availability of the first 
miniature antenna prototypes which have been developed taking into 
consideration the stringent environment and propagation conditions 
related to end-user housings (e.g. hearing-aid housing, cochlear implant 
housing). Both passive and active antennas - active meaning that the 
device incorporates tuning mechanisms to cover the entire 2.4GHz 
frequency band - have been developed and characterised successfully at 
laboratory level. The next step is to combine them with the WISERBAN SoC 
and verify proper functionality when implemented in the selected housings.
At MEMS level, several first prototypes were developed and demonstrated 
successfully, such as the BAW resonators and filters, and the SAW 
filters. First promising results for the SiRes MEMS have been shown on 
wafer-in-air, but need to be confirmed under vacuum packaging. The next 
step is to stabilise the SiRes packaging process, which is a critical 
challenge currently being addressed.
On the software side, the industrial end-user partners have elaborated a 
common framework for building the control software pieces. On the 
wireless networking side, a dedicated protocol stack was developed and 
optimised with respect to low-power communication for body-sensor 
networks. The potential of this protocol has already been demonstrated 
on a benchmark sensor network constructed with off-the-shelf radio 
circuits, in anticipation of implementing a WISERBAN network.
When do you expect the technology to start benefiting European citizens?
The technology should benefit EU citizens once the complete WISERBAN 
technology is installed in end-user products. This is expected around 
2015 - maybe later for those products which are related to health care 
and hence require more certification steps. Specific technology bricks, 
like some circuits or MEMS devices, could be leveraged towards 
semiconductor products earlier, in 2014.
What are the next steps of the project, or next topics for your research?
Beyond the WISERBAN project, several topics have emerged forfuture 
research. WISERBAN is currently concerned with applications operated 
with tiny batteries - so a first research path would be to push system 
integration further by combining it with emerging energy-harvesting 
technologies that could collect energy from moving limbs, heartbeats, or 
body heat.
Another interesting path is the further reduction of the volume and size 
of wireless microsystems, by exploring disruptive radio architectures 
using next-generation CMOS technologies (e.g. down to 10nm CMOS) or 
beyond-CMOS technologies (based on nanomaterials). Such approaches pave 
theway towards zero-energy and virtually invisible communication 
devices, and will enable a plurality of novel health-care and 
bio-medical applications, such as smart skin for human prosthetics, 
unobtrusive monitoring devices for healthy living and ageing, networks 
of implants for assisting surgical interventions, or tiny implanted 
neuro-stimulation solutions for curing neurological disorders.
The project was coordinated by the Centre Suisse d'Electronique et de 
Microtechnique (CSEM) in Switzerland.
For more information, please visit:
WISERBAN
http://www.wiserban.eu/
Project factsheet
http://cordis.europa.eu/projects/rcn/95472_en.html
CSEM
http://www.csem.ch/site/
/SOURCE: CORDIS/

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