Electronics and IP: Part I – Look before you leap
There is an epidemic raging in the U.S. and elsewhere in the industrialized world, an epidemic that is driving explosive growth in a multi-billion-dollar segment of the consumer electronics market. This epidemic is poor health, driven by a sedentary lifestyle, a populace addicted to convenience foods riddled with fat and sugar, and an aging baby boomer generation. The number of people suffering...
High-Reliability Components Market Shows Strength during Downturn and After
The market for high-reliability (hi-rel) components was one of the few growth sectors during the recent downturn. The concentration of military, medical, space, and aerospace—while not recession proof—mostly experienced moderate growth over the past two years. While much of this market involves serving legacy systems, new advances in satellite technology, medical systems, and downhole...
The current crop of processors continue to push the envelope for power-management ICs
There’s an ever-expanding list of power efficient microprocessors designed by Intel, Freescale, Marvell, ARM and many others that provide low power consumption and high performance processing for a wide range of wireless, embedded and networking applications. The original intent of these processors was to enable consumer product OEMs to develop smaller, more cost-effective portable...
Piezo Motors and Actuators: Medical Device Performance
Improvement in the design of medical equipment for better-streamlined functionality and performance is influenced by a number of critical factors. The research, design, modeling, testing, prototyping, and FDA and EU approvals of new mechatronic (mechanical-electronic) devices or iterations usually represents a sizable capital investment of resources well before the equipment goes into serial...
Embedded systems power down
Rick Nelson, Editor-in-Chief Applications ranging from health care to environmental, structural, and spectrum monitoring are driving the need for low-power sensors that will permeate our world, delivering data that enhances our quality of life. EDN estimates that manufacturers will develop and deploy 1000 sensors per person over the next 10 years, amounting to more than 1 trillion sensors. Those...
ARM-based processor is aimed at patient monitoring
Software and hardware engineers can easily design medical patient monitoring devices utilizing the DaVinci DM37x video processors from Texas Instruments (TI). The DM3730 and DM3725, with their ARM Cortex-A8 and C64x+ DSP core, offer an imaging and video accelerator (IVA), a 3D graphics processor (DM3730 only), and high-performance peripherals (USB 2.0, SD/MMC) integrated on a system-on-chip (SoC...
Power Supplies Available for Low-Leakage Medical Applications
A company has added a medical-grade power supply to its product suite. The 400-W TMPC400-72 has a leakage current of <90µA at 264 V ac and is suited for medical applications that require low leakage. Measuring 150 × 140 × 86 mm, the power supply features 90–265-V ac full range input and active PFC. It comes with an IEC320/C14 AC inlet as well as a power switch. The...
Diagnosing Medical Design Trends
Connected health, which can be defined as technology-enabled care and the potential for new strategies in healthcare delivery, is driving growth in embedded design applications. Advanced medical devices that require high performance include both large-scale systems as well as hand-held, portable devices.   High-performance COMs give OEMs design flexibility. Some feature 32-nm Intel...
Improving Performance with Capacitance Laminates
The global electronics industry is exhibiting a widespread interest in embedded passives. This interest can be attributed to three primary benefits of the technology. First, embedded passives have far less parasitic inductance than do discrete components, which enables electrical performance advantages in high-speed digital applications. Second, embedding saves surface real estate, which allows...
Selective Soldering Benefits Mixed Technology Assemblies
  SOLDERING       This multilayer board shows a design using critical through-hole and SMD technology. Many of these boards cannot withstand typical solder processing temperatures. Modern medical monitoring devices require extremely complex internal electronic assemblies. The availability of highly miniaturized, low-power RF devices and specialized...
Designing Robust Wireless Sensor Applications
    Originally Published MEM Fall 2009 WIRELESS TECHNOLOGY         An engineer works on a medical project being developed on a platform running both Windows and Linux on a separation kernel and hypervisor. Wireless sensors are quickly making inroads into prehospital, in-hospital, ambulatory, home monitoring, and long-term care settings. These sensors...
Using Ultrasmall System-in-Package Components in Medical Electronics
  Originally Published MEM Fall 2008 MINIATURIZATION       High-density manufacture is essential to keep ahead of an increasingly competitive market. Product size is often a key sales driver and, while greatly influenced by processors and large complex components, packing densities are just as strongly determined by the size and interspacing of passive components. This is...
Integrating Built-In Connectors into Medical Electronics
  Originally Published MEM Fall 2008 The medical industry has seen a rapid increase in the use of digital electronics in items such as catheters, defibrillators, and monitors. New medical chip sets are capable of handling multiple input data channels from analytical instruments. These chips also provide a wide range of display information, machine orders, and pump signals. Medical equipment...
Plexus Expands Footprint in North America
      Plexus Corp. (Neenah, WI) has announced plans to expand its North American manufacturing footprint. The company's facility in the San Jose area will relocate to a larger 46,000-sq-ft space located about eight miles from the existing facility. Plexus's Chicago-area operations will expand into a 48,000-sq-ft facility adjacent to the existing facility, bringing the site's total...
Noritake Joins Forces with Mouser for Modules
      Noritake Company, Inc. (Nagoya, Japan) has selected Mouser Electronics Inc. (Mansfield, TX) to distribute its vacuum fluorescent display (VFD) modules. According to Mouser, introducing the VFD modules to its engineering customers can help Noritake market its products to a previously untapped segment, and it may also bring additional customers to Noritake. Mouser says that the...
Northwire Moves, Expands in Asia
      Northwire Inc. (Osceola, WI) has relocated and expanded its Asian operations. The firm's new facility, located in Jiangsu Province, China, includes a 5300-sq-ft warehouse and 3400-sq-ft office. Northwire says that the facility is intended to address increased demand for the company's products. The firm's previous Asian facility, located in Shanghai, was a sales office and it...
Invisar Named Microchip Technology Medical Design Partner
  Microchip Technology (Chandler, AZ) has named Invisar Inc. (Hillsborough, NC), an engineering and design services company focused on the medical device industry, as a medical design partner specialist. According to Microchip, these specialists possess a high level of technical expertise and knowledge of FDA regulatory requirements governing the medical device industry. The designation...
Computer-on-Modules: Standardized Processing for Medical Electronics
  SYSTEMS DESIGN       Computer-on-modules, as shown here, provide standardized form and function. With ever-increasing speed requirements for modern processors and system buses, designing a cpu-based board from the ground up has become a daunting challenge for OEMs. Often, OEMs' resources would be better served by focusing on their core competencies and product...
Using Lubricants to Avoid Failures in Medical Electronic Connectors
  RELIABILITY       Figure 1. Under magnification, the metal-to-metal interface in an electronic connector can be seen to be rough (1). Micromotion (2) abrades both surfaces, allowing corrosion to create debris particles that can separate the interfaces and prevent conductivity (3). (click to enlarge) Electronic connectors typically fail when...
Designing and Optimizing Battery Systems for Portable Medical Devices
  Originally Published MEM Fall 2005 BATTERY TECHNOLOGY   Product safety and performance reliability depend on the mobile-equipment designer making informed component decisions and then testing the design under real-world conditions. Robin Tichy The demand for portable medical devices is on the rise. Advances in battery-based power systems have allowed traditionally tethered devices to...
Communications-Protocol Testing: Balancing Technology, Planning, and Compliance
  Originally Published MEM Fall 2004 MICROPROCESSORS   Manufacturers must test communications interfaces thoroughly and carefully to avoid problems later. David A. Vogel and David S. Bernazzani Testing the increasing number of microprocessors that need to communicate reliably with each other within medical devices poses not one but three different testing challenges: technical, planning...
PCB-Level Shielding Technology for Today's Medical Wireless World
  Originally Published MEM Fall 2004 SHIELDING   A thermoformed, metallized plastic shielding offers an alternative to gasketing and metallic shielding enclosures. Ross Livington Portable handheld wireless devices used in today's medical applications feature smaller form factors that weigh less. These devices include wireless PDAs, laptop data-connect cards, and handheld data-...
Display Technology for New Portable Medical Instruments
  Originally Published MEM Fall 2004 DISPLAY TECHNOLOGY   Durable new displays that can be read in any light are built for easy integration. Dave Hagan Sidebar: System-on-Chip Devices: Finding a Brain for a Portable Medical Device For virtually every medical equipment application, the healthcare industry wants displays that are bright, crisp, and easy to read....
System-on-Chip Devices: Finding a Brain for a Portable Medical Device
  Originally Published MEM Fall 2004 DISPLAY TECHNOLOGY   Christophe Chene Return to Article: Display Technology for New Portable Medical Instruments From the user's perspective, the display is usually the most important component of a medical instrument. But inside the box is the real brain of the device—the microprocessor. As medical equipment...
From the Editor
  Originally Published MEM Spring 2004   When we think of medical electronics, we often think of large, complicated equipment like MRIs. But, sometimes, it's the small devices that can make the biggest difference. One of this year's Medical Design Excellence Awards winners was just such a device. The Partner Rhythm Assistant, made by Guidant Corp. (Indianapolis), is a handheld device...