2010 Second International Conference on Computer Engineering and Applications

Design and Application of Mobile Embedded Systems for Home Care Applications
Penhaker M., Stankus M., Kijonka J.
Department of Measurement and Control VSB Technical University of Ostrava Ostrava, Czech Republic marek.penhaker@vsb.vsb.cz, martin.stankus@vsb.cz, jan.kijonka@vsb.cz
Abstract Applied biotelemetry is of growing importance in today's world. Specificity of biotelemetric data put special requirements on real biotelemetric system. This article describes some of conclusions acquired in development of real biotelemetric system using off the shelf embedded hardware technology, namely ARM microcontrollers, FRAM memory and dedicated ZigBee chipsets. Described biotelemetric system is partitioned into logical parts that communicate using custom data protocols. Devices participating in biotelemetric system use ZigBee and Ethernet networks as underlying structure for data communication. Biotelemetry, ZigBee, microcontroller, measurement

Grygarek P.
Department of Informatics VSB Technical University of Ostrava Ostrava, Czech Republic petr.grygarek@vsb.cz

Optional part of model biotelemetric system is class of ZigBee routers. These devices are not endpoints of communication and as such are not considered indispensable part of model biotelemetric system. Their sole purpose is to provide coverage by signal of ZigBee network. Individual elements of inner part of model biotelemetric system and scheme of data flows among them can be seen in Figure 1.

I.

INTRODUCTION

Described model biotelemetric system is embedded system of distributed nature aimed at monitoring of patient's vital functions, among others ECG, heart rate, blood pressure and oxygen saturation. There is need to track other values as well - body and ambient temperature, patient's posture, body weight and patient's location in monitored space. To accomplish these goals, various kinds of data need to be acquired and processed. II. CONCEPT OF BIOTELEMETRIC SYSTEM
Figure 1. Inner part of model biotelemetric system

Model biotelemetric system can be partitioned into two basic parts. Inner part located in patient's home and outer part located in monitoring centre. Both parts are subpartitioned into participating elements. A. Inner Part of Model Biotelemetric System Inner part of model biotelemetric system is located in space where patient spends most of his time. Main purpose of this subsystem is to acquire biotelemetric data and to hand them over to outer part of model biotelemetric system. Communication in inner part of model biotelemetric system is implemented using ZigBee technology. There are three main hardware elements in inner part of model biotelemetric system, all marked with symbolic names: CERBERUS - mobile data acquiring unit ORTHRUS - stationary data forwarding unit SENSORs - stationary data acquiring unit
978-0-7695-3982-9/10 $26.00 2010 IEEE DOI 10.1109/ICCEA.2010.86 412

Main purpose of element CERBERUS is to acquire the most important of biometric data - ECG. CERBERUS also acquires values of body and ambient temperature and changes in patient's posture. CERBERUS is mobile unit and is always in close proximity to patient. The purpose of element ORTHRUS is to collect various measured data from elements of inner part of model biotelemetric system and forward them to outer part of this system. ORTHRUS acts as midpoint in inner part of model biotelemetric system and is essential for it's operation. SENSORs are stationary dedicated units of various types that measure values not acquirable by CERBERUS. Measurement of these values is not always fully automatic and requires certain cooperation from patient. Examples of this are measurements of heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen saturation and other values depending on specialised sensor hardware.

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B. Outer Part of Model Biotelemetric System Outer part of model biotelemetric system is located outside space where patient spends most of his time. Single instance of outer part of model biotelemetric system is common to multiple inner parts of systems monitoring individual patients. Inner and outer parts of system communicate using TCP and UDP protocols of TCP/IP protocol suite over FastEthernet infrastructure. There are four main elements in outer part of model biotelemetric system: CENTREs - endpoints aggregating measured data DHCP server - provides IP settings NTP server - provides accurate time SNMP NMS - management of whole system Individual elements of outer part of model biotelemetric system and data flows among them can be seen in Figure 2. Element ORTHRUS acts as demarcation point between inner and outer part of system. Measured values are stored and evaluated in facility CENTRE0 and/or backup facility CENTRE1. Configuration and management of inner part of biotelemetric system are fully automatic from perspective of patient. Inner system configuration and management are realized using DHCP, NTP and SNMP protocols.

of inner part of model biotelemetric system. For purpose of ease of developement, hardware of both elements is unified to a certain degree. Both elements use the same microcontroller, data-caching technology using FRAM buffer and ZigBee wireless controller. Block scheme of this architecture can be seen in Figure. 3.

Figure 3. Block scheme of hardware

Figure 2. Outer part of model biotelemetric system

As central processing unit is used 32 bit ARM7TDMI RISC microcontroller clocked at 48 MHz. Communication between microcontroller and periferies is implemented using three wire SPI bus. As ZigBee communication solution is used dedicated 2.4 GHz ISM band ZigBee chipset running ZigBee protocol stack. Caching of biotelemetric data is implemented with 512 kB of fast FRAM memory. Primary purpose of this cache is to provide temporary data storage in case of short time ZigBee and / or Ethernet network failure. Another device connected to SPI bus is FPGA parsing raw biometric data. This device is present only in CERBERUS element. Whole architecture is interrupt driven. Both ZigBee controller and FPGA perform their tasks autonomously and can inform microcontroller about pending events asynchronously. One of differences between elements ORTHRUS and CERBERUS is their power solution. CERBERUS is mobile device powered by 780 mAh accumulator. ORTHRUS is mains powered device. While discrete nature of used hardware parts is appropriate for ORTHRUS element, CERBERUS mobile element can benefit from more integrated and power efficient solution in future revisions of model biotelemetric system. IV. DATA FLOWS IN MODEL BIOTELEMETRIC SYSTEM Data flows in model biotelemetric system can be divisioned into several correlating categories. These data flows are biometric data flow from CERBERUS element, biometric data flow from SENSORs elements, management data flow and provisioning data flow. There is one to one mapping between data transported by different network technologies. A. Data Flow from CERBERUS Element Data flow from CERBERUS element is in Figure. 1 and Figure. 2 marked with green arrow and number 1. This data

III.

KEY DATA PROCESSING HARDWARE COMPONENTS

From a data processing point of view, key embedded components are elements ORTHRUS and CERBERUS of inner part of model biotelemetric system. Dedicated SENSORs are simple devices injecting data into model biotelemetric system and thus their data processing performance is not crucial. Strictly speaking, various management servers and data aggregation points in outer part of model biotelemetric system are not of embedded nature. These elements are made of standard server hardware components and their performance for purpose of data manipulation is more than sufficient. Key embedded data processing units are elements ORTHRUS and CERBERUS

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flow includes three channel ECG data, data representing body and ambient temperature and patient's posture. Three channel ECG data are represented by three 12 bit samples transmitted with rate of 300 messages per second giving data rate of 2400 Bps. Body and ambient temperature are represented by 8 bit sample each transmitted with rate of one message per 10 minutes giving data rate of 1/60 Bps. Patient posture is measured using two accelerometers, one located inside CERBERUS unit and the other attached on patient's body. Each accelerometer provides reading of three axis with resolution 10 bit each. Patient's posture is measured with rate of 125 measurements per second giving final data rate of 2500 Bps. All these data are measured periodically. Data of each type has allocated dedicated ZigBee cluster ID serving as logical address in ZigBee network. When these data are forwarded by CERBERUS element to facilities in class CENTRE, this ZigBee cluster ID is embedded in TCP stream allowing unambiguous identification of data type. B. Data Flow from SENSORs Element Data flow from SENSORs elements is in Figure. 1 and Figure. 2 marked with red arrow and number 2. This data flow includes measurements of heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, body weight and patient's location in monitored space. All of these measurements are asynchronous and are initiated by patient's action.

All data measured by elements in class SENSORs are forwarded not only to outer part of model biotelemetric system, but to CERBERUS element as well. This way, it is possible to show measured data to patient. For this purpose, element CERBERUS is equipped with LCD display. Although part of this model biotelemetric system, LCD display unit plays no role in biometric data processing and thus is not described in this article. Element CERBERUS is equipped with LCD display and keyboard, both driven by Atmel AVR microcontroller. Purpose of LCD display and keyboard is to allow simple interaction with patient. Patient can choose to see his own biometric data. Keyboard allows customization of graphical user interface. Patient can explicitly issue help request that is immediately sent to surveillance facility CENTRE0/1. Patient interaction part of CERBERUS is connected to FLASH memory holding user data, namely graphics of graphical user interface, user settings and other auxiliary data. Atmel AVR microcontroller communicates with FLASH memory and LCD/keyboard unit by SPI bus. Communication between Atmel AVR and ARM7TDMI microcontrollers is implemented by I2C bus. Atmel ARM microcontroller has interrupt line to ARM7TDMI available, communication between microcontrollers is interrupt driven. Both microcontrollers have RS232 and JTAG ports available at common service connector for purpose of maintenance, programming and debugging.

Figure 5. ECG, blood pressure and Patient's surroundings visualization Figure 4. CERBERUS - patient interaction part

Heart rate and blood pressure data are aggregated in one composite type of message with total length of 3 Bytes. Oxygen saturation as well as body weight are represented by 2 Bytes each. Patient's location in monitored space is measured by specialized sensors, each sensor transmitting it's unique 1 Byte ID when patient is in it's proximity.

The most important part of the project was visualization possibilities. The visualization was done by graphic user interface on embedded system like mobile phone. There were used the LCD a keyboards with several buttons for handling the graphics completely. The Visualization is integral part of IVFMS. Element CERBERUS contains LCD display capable of displaying

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color raster graphics. Although displaying of biometric data is rather of approximate character, it's still very important for comfort of patient. Useful feature is display of battery charge level, ZigBee network signal quality and current time. Patient can among others see his ECG (Figure 5) and visualization of various trends, for example blood pressure (Figure 5) and oxygen saturation (Figure 5). Patient's position in monitored space, measured by ZigBee sensors, can be displayed on actual picture of patient's surroundings (Figure 5). C. Management Data Flow Management data flow is in Figure. 1 and Figure. 2 marked with blue arrow and number 3. The purpose of this data flow is to provide means for centralized administration of inner part of model biotelemetric system. Element ORTHRUS serves as translator between outer part of model biotelemetric system that use SNMP technology for management and inner part of system implementing management by dedicated ZigBee logical links. There is dedicated 16 bit ZigBee cluster ID for management link between every single ZigBee device and ORTHRUS element. Possible messages in management data flow include notification of error and specification of error, order to perform reset, status of battery charge of battery powered elements, time setting and parameters of ZigBee network, especially ZigBee PAN ID.

starting ORTHRUS element. Example of this use can be seen on Figure. 6. V. CONCLUSIONS In these time, model biotelemetric system is being implemented into working solution. Nevertheless, there is space for improvements in both concept and implementation details of this system. Model biotelemetric system is currently designed for indoor use by one patient only. More nearby instances of inner part of model biotelemetric system managed by single outer part of system are possible, but there exists one to one mapping between patient and ZigBee network. Future improvements may include support for outdoor operation with communication implemented using 3G mobile technology and patient's tracking by GPS system. With advancements in low-power high-density FPGA solutions, FPGA programmable system on chip technology seems to be promising for purpose of this biotelemetric system. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The work and the contribution were supported by the project Grant Agency of Czech Republic GAR 102/08/1429 Safety and security of networked embedded system applications. Also supported by the Ministry of Education of the Czech Republic under Project 1M0567. REFERENCES
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D. Provisioning Data Flow Provisioning data flow is in Figure. 2 marked with black arrow and number 4. It's sole purpose is to provide initial setting for starting of ORTHRUS element. Provisioning data flow exists only in outer part of model biotelemetric system and is not translated into ZigBee messages of inner part of system. Provisioning data flow use DHCP and NTP technology to set TCP/IP protocol related settings, time and IP address of SNMP Network Monitoring Station. Management and provisioning data flow are designed as flexible means for administration of inner part of model biotelemetric system. Their most important use is in setup of
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