HEAL-WEAR: an Ultra-Low Power Heterogeneous System for Bio-Signal Analysis

Personalized healthcare devices enable low-cost, unobtrusive and long-term acquisition of clinically-relevant biosignals. These appliances, termed Wireless Body Sensor Nodes (WBSNs), are fostering a revolution in health monitoring for patients affected by chronic ailments. Nowadays, WBSNs often embed complex digital processing routines, which must be performed within an extremely tight energy budget. Addressing this challenge, in this paper we introduce a novel computing architecture devoted to the ultra-low power analysis of biosignals. Its heterogeneous structure comprises multiple processors interfaced with a shared acceleration resource, implemented as a Coarse Grained Reconfigurable Array (CGRA). The CGRA mesh effectively supports the execution of the intensive loops that characterize bio-signal analysis applications, while requiring a low reconfiguration overhead. Moreover, both the processors and the reconfigurable fabric feature Single-Instruction / Multiple- Data (SIMD) execution modes, which increase efficiency when multiple data streams are concurrently processed. The run-time behavior on the system is orchestrated by a light-weight hardware mechanism, which concurrently synchronizes processors for SIMD execution and regulates access to the reconfigurable accelerator. By jointly leveraging run-time reconfiguration and SIMD execution, the illustrated heterogeneous system achieves, when executing complex bio-signal analysis applications, speedups of up to 11.3x on the considered kernels and up to 37.2% overall energy savings, with respect to an ultra-low power multicore platform which does not feature CGRA acceleration

Antennas and RF energy-harvesting devices for Office or Domestic environments

The research work that is to be presented is basedon the study and designing of a rectenna systemfor wireless RF energy harvesting for domestic or indoor environments. An introduction to the essentialprerequisites have been presented prior to the work along with the literature survey that went in and thus, the main research work was presented along with the different tests and the various results from both simulations as well as results.The main research work is divided into two parts. The first part investigates antennas for energy harvesting techniques and wireless indoor power reception from a transmitting RF power source. The antennas are intended to work as the receptor of the power signals for the available ambient RF signals.At the WiFi frequency of 2.4 GHz, antennas such as slot antennas, dipole antennas and Ultra-Wide-Band antennas were put up against each other in a comparative analysis based on simulation in CST microwave studio as well as experimentation with their various types to find the most suitable one for energy harvesting purposes. Real-time RF field-measurement tests were conducted using antennas to analyse their performances as well as evaluating the amount of available RF-power in a common domestic environment.The second part of the work focuseson the designing of the equivalent circuit design of the antenna and creating of the matching network and rectifier. The novel technique of equivalent antenna-circuit was implemented in the simulation in the Agilent ADS software of microstrip-rectifiers and the matching network design to create a chip that carried the microstrips and the matching network as well as the filters. An analytical field-test was conducted using the chip with the antennas to determine the amount of power than can be harnessed by the rectenna system

Réalisation et tests d'un système implmantable dédié à la stimulation neurale sélective

Le système urinaire et la stimulation électrique -- Les voies neurologiques -- La miction normale -- Les complications vésicales -- Le traitement des complications de la miction -- La stimulation électrique pour provoquer la miction -- La stimulation sélective pour provoquer la miction -- La stimulation sélective -- Les limites des sytèmes existants -- Proposition d'un système dédié à la stimulation sélective -- Les considérations de design -- Le système proposé -- Design des contrôleurs externes -- Design du stimulateur implantable (implant) sur circuit imprimé -- Design d'une puce dédiée à la stimulation électrique sélective -- Aperçu de l'implant entièrement intégré sur un dé de silicium -- Design du récepteur transcutané -- Circuit numérique de réception, de contrôle et de génération des stimuli -- Simulations fonctionnelles -- Réalisation du circuit intégré -- Tests fonctionnels et résultats expérimentaux