Ultra-low-power electronics for non-invasive medical monitoring

• Main Authors: Turicchia, Lorenzo (Contributor), Mandal, Soumyajit (Contributor), Tavakoli, Maziar (Author), Fay, L. (Author), Misra, Vinith (Author), Bohorquez, Jose L. (Contributor), Sanchez, William R. (Contributor), Sarpeshkar, Rahul (Contributor)
• Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (Contributor), Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Research Laboratory of Electronics (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), 2012-07-25T12:47:41Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

 New electronics for non-invasive medical monitoring promise low-cost, maintenance-free, and lightweight devices. These devices are critical in long-term medical measurements and in home-based tele-monitoring services, which are extremely important for the reduction of health care costs. Here, we present several methods for reducing power consumption while retaining precision. In particular, we focus on the monitoring of the heart-because of its importance-and we describe a micropower electrocardiograph, an ultra-low-power pulse oximeter, an ultra-low-power phonocardiograph, an integrated-circuit switched-capacitor model of the heart, and a low-power RF-antenna-powered CMOS rectifier for energy harvesting. We also introduce an ultra-low-power platform for medical monitoring that enables the integration of monitoring circuitry in a wireless, low-cost, and battery-free device, and describe a method for audio localization of the device in case of a medical alarm.