Chapter 8 - Implementation of ultra-low-power electronics for biomedical applications

Abstract

Healthcare, the name itself, raises a severe concern in every human being and can create a serious debate in some countries. Availing the medical facilities has become expensive due to the increase in cost and growing population in India. Also, the government has difficult alternatives on how to allocate the expenditures for types of equipment, resources, and facilities for the public. Hence, the current trends of technologies focus on low voltage and low power consumption in IC chips that are designed with an increase in requests for smaller sized devices and which, in turn, need to operate at low voltage. As a result, the battery life will be longer to make sure that they are used in portable applications such as telecommunications, computers, and mainly in biomedical applications. This chapter talks about the importance of utilization of power, which is one of the major constraints while designing any small chip, particularly in biomedical applications and wireless communications. The electrical part of biomedical devices includes distribution of potentiality in the form of energy, transforming signals from analog to digitalized (ADC), and analyzing, modifying, and synthesizing signals and transmission systems. Medical implantable devices like pacemakers and defibrillators are crucial in biomedical systems, requiring full battery life and needing to run 24/7 to save the patient’s life without any delay. Thus, our focus is to track the device data and patient health using wireless remote sensing techniques along with an ensemble of various blocks like an operational amplifier, operational transconductance amplifier, and many other methods to maintain the battery life with low power consumption and better accuracy.