Mobile medical applications are increasing 32-bit MCUs are becoming mainstream

As medical devices enter the home, medical electronics are beginning to change, and cheaper, smaller personal medical devices are transforming the medical electronics industry. According to Gartner research, portable medical devices such as blood glucose meters, blood pressure monitors, and heart rate monitors are the fastest growing segments of the medical device market. In addition to being extremely sensitive to price, these consumer portable medical devices are more demanding in terms of reliability, accuracy, low power consumption, small size, and stable voltage.

In order to provide lower-cost, higher-demand devices, medical device developers must reduce the cost of system design, and most of them will choose high-integration, fast and accurate computing capabilities of the microcontroller. Liu Junhong, NXP technical marketing manager, pointed out that microcontrollers have been widely used in the medical electronics market. In particular, the TFT-LCD interface of 32-bit ARM microcontrollers is suitable for LCD display applications in medical monitoring devices and supports floating-point operations. Its low power consumption is more suitable for portable medical product applications.

Mobile medical applications are growing, 32-bit MCUs are becoming mainstream

In addition, as the functions of portable medical devices become more complex, more and more embedded control applications such as filtering, interpolation, noise reduction, spectrum, demodulation, etc. require signal processing, and 8- or 16-bit microcontrollers usually require Consume a lot of computing resources to handle these tasks. In contrast, ARM's 32-bit Cortex M0, M0+ or ​​M4 is more powerful with more computing power, and powerful microcontrollers with built-in floating-point arithmetic are beginning to emerge. While emphasizing high performance, low power consumption is also important for portable devices. The Cortex M0 and M0+ technologies are beneficial for medical devices to achieve lower power consumption.

Mobile medical applications are growing, 32-bit MCUs are becoming mainstream

In the same task, M0, M0+ can achieve lower energy consumption. Liu Junhong explained that Cortex M0 has the same performance as M0+ and 8/16 bits, which can significantly reduce its operation, dynamic power consumption is equivalent to 16-bit processor; and it can easily integrate power management through wake-up interrupt controller. unit. At the same time, 32-bit microcontrollers can support other functions of portable medical devices such as instant clock, motor control, SD/MMC Card interface, etc., so Liu Junhong pointed out that more and more medical equipment development has been carried out. The company chose the higher-performance ARM 32-bit Cortex M0, M0+ or ​​M4 to design the product.

Why is MCU the key to mobile healthcare ?

With the rapid spread of mobile devices, mobile medical has become a hot topic in recent years, and the market has grown rapidly, which has also led to many new business models. According to a market research report from PR Newswire, the mobile medical market will reach US$23.49 billion in 2018, with a compound annual growth rate of 30.5% between 2013 and 2018.

Medical electronics has gradually evolved toward application orientation, while miniaturization, differentiation and portability are the development trends.

In addition, according to BCC Research, the global home medical equipment will grow from 19 billion US dollars in 2011 to 26.2 billion US dollars in 2016. Among them, auxiliary rehabilitation equipment and monitoring devices will be the main driving force for growth, and portable medical equipment will also be There will be substantial growth. Lai Jianxun, a science and technology expert at the Technology Department of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, said: "The whole medical trend is changing. The future will sell and make money, all of which are miniaturized medical equipment.

When medical equipment enters the home, medical electronics has a different development trend. Different from the traditional medical equipment, the mobility is low, the space is limited, and the home-based medical care is becoming smaller and miniaturized. After joining the wireless communication technology, it will increase the diversification of its application. Liu Junhong, NXP technical marketing manager, said that medical electronics has gradually evolved toward application-oriented development, while miniaturization, differentiation and portability are the development trend.

Although these home-based and portable medical devices have lower thresholds for clinical devices than hospitals, their design requirements are quite different from those of traditional medical devices. Liu Junhong said that high integration, fast and accurate computing power, long-lasting battery life, safe and stable power supply, portable, small size, wireless connectivity and other features are not necessary for traditional medical settings, in portable medical Equipment is an extremely important design requirement.

Among them, especially low-power consumption is extremely important for portable medical devices. However, when these devices must have high-performance computing capabilities and more wireless transmission interfaces, they must also maintain low-power characteristics, which is a dilemma that manufacturers often encounter when designing products. In addition to the medical market, in the motion monitoring market, more and more devices have low power consumption requirements. Liu Junhong said that from the perspective of MCU design, for this design challenge, ARM's Cortex M0 and M8 can meet high-performance, low-power requirements, and the software design is simple.

In fact, MCU has been widely used in the medical electronic equipment market, from high-end patient monitors, medical imaging systems, to low-end market sphygmomanometers, blood glucose meters, heart rate monitors, etc., ultra-low power The consumption is suitable for portable medical device applications, and the 32-bit MCU has been accepted by most manufacturers. Liu Junhong pointed out that compared with the 8-bit or 16-bit MCU operation design, the 32-bit performance is significantly higher, and the task can be executed more quickly and enter the power-saving mode. In order to achieve more power-saving effect, NXP also provides Cortex M4 and M0 high- and low-level integrated dual-core MCU, through the mutual matching of the two to achieve lower power design.

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