Generic Scavenger Powered DSP-based System-on-Chip for Emerging Implantable Biosensors and Bioactuators

Léandre Bolomey, Laboratory of Microengineering for Manufacturing, EPFL-STI-LPM2, Lausanne

Abstract: As more biomedical equipment devices exploit ultra-low-power mixed-signal design innovations, the variety of medical semiconductor applications continues to expand. The ability to combine analog and digital signals in very close proximity alongside wireless communications has led to the development of new implantable medical devices.

Implantable devices have a number of fundamental design requirements. They must feature a long and relatively maintenance-free life due to the cost and complications of explantation and the serious implications of malfunctions or failure. In addition, they must have ultra-low power consumption, and the battery life must be as long as possible (typically more than 10 years for some devices). Power consumption determines the life of the implant. It also figures the size of the battery, often the largest component in an application where the absolute minimum size achievable is critical.

The present project proposition addresses these aspects and aims at specifying and demonstrating a generic DSP -based SoC where the power supply is supplemented by a vibration-based energy scavenging MEMS and dedicated to implantable medical devices. The SoC will feature all requirements inherent to implantable medical devices, i.e. high reliability and high integration design, ultra low power consumption, wireless capabilities while taking into account ethical and privacy issues, DSP functions and a rich set of integrated peripherals to control efficiently any biosensor and bioactuator.

The targeted application envisioned to validate the concept is the implantable glucose sensor under development at LPM. The scavenger and the SoC will respectively power and control this sensor.

About the speaker: Léandre Bolomey is an electrical engineer specialized in low power embedded system design and integration.

Born in 1980, Morges (Switzerland), he received his masters degree in electrical sciences at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in 2003. In 2004 he has worked at Xemics (Statek) as ASIC test engineer and at DspFactory (AMIS) for the design of a hearing aids analogue front-end. From 2004 to 2005 he has worked as assistant at the Laboratoire de Production Microtechnique (EPFL). During this period he has participated to a European project (SPARC) in which he has developed an embedded dual-core platform for vision application in the automotive area. He has also worked for a CTI project in which he has designed a RF transceiver for a passive implantable glucose sensor.

Since 2006 he has started his thesis work on Generic implantable Body Sensor Node.