How MCUs Impact Health Monitoring Devices 2023

The fitness product market took a hit a few years ago when wristband-sized health monitors exploded on the scene. Then came smartwatches, which were able to collect more advanced health-related data. Now, telemedicine is becoming increasingly popular. In fact, some say that telemedicine, which relies heavily on remote health monitoring devices, has great potential to reduce healthcare costs in the future.

Therefore, as the health monitor market heats up, there is a need for microcontrollers (MCUs) with a special combination of features and resources to simplify product development and deliver the quality required by these devices. The first thing on a developer's "must have" list is definitely a high degree of integration, as most health monitors are very small devices, which means that the MCU and associated circuitry must have a very small form factor.

Part 1. What is MCU

#1. MCU Definition 

MCU chip refers to Microcontroller Unit (MCU), also known as a single-chip microcomputer or monolithic computer, which is a central processor with appropriate frequency and specification reduction, and integrates peripheral interfaces such as memory, USB, A/D conversion, counter, UART, PLC, DMA to form the chip-level computer. It can be used for different applications with different combinations of control.

#2. Working Principle of MCU

To know the technical principle of MCU chip, we need to understand the process of MCU to complete the task, that is, the process of MCU to execute instructions. instructions in MCU are written down by the designer, requiring the microcontroller to execute various operation commands in the form of an instruction corresponding to a basic operation; all instructions that can be executed by the microcontroller is the instruction system of the microcontroller.

Different types of microcontrollers have different instruction systems. In order for a microcontroller function to automatically complete a specific task, the problem to be solved must be coded into a series of instructions, and these instructions must be identified and executed by a separate function, so that a collection of instructions becomes a program, and these programs need to be pre-stored in memory with storage capacity, which is often referred to as memory.

Memory is composed of many storage units, just as a large house has many rooms, a room is a unit, and each room has a unique room number. Thus, when the instructions in the unit are extracted and executed, the stored instructions can be extracted and executed precisely as long as the "room number" of the memory unit is known.

Since the program is executed sequentially, the instructions in the program are stored one by one, and the MCU must have the ability to track the "room number" where the instructions are located in order to extract and execute them one by one when the program is executed.

When the program starts to run, PC will be assigned to the "room number" of each instruction in the program and execute the instruction one by one, and the contents of PC will be increased automatically by the length of this instruction, each one pointing to the starting address of the next instruction to ensure the sequential execution of instructions.

#3. Popular MCU Chips for 2023:

TMS320F28335PGFA

MCF5282CVM66

STM32F429IGT6

SAK-TC2

STM8S003F3P6TR

ULN2803ADWR

O3853QDCARQ1

mc9rs08ka8ctg

#4. MCU Applications:

• 4-bit MCUs in most cases are used in calculators, car meters, car anti-theft devices, pagers, wireless phones, CD players, LCD display controllers, LCD game consoles, children's toys, scales, chargers, tire pressure meters, thermohygrometers, remote controls and dumb cameras;
• 8-bit MCU is used in electric meters, motor controllers, electric toy machines, inverter air conditioners, pagers and so on. Among them, 8-bit and 16-bit MCU are mainly used in the general control field, generally without operating system.
• 16-bit MCUs are mainly used in mobile phones, digital cameras and camcorders, etc;
• 32-bit MCUs are used in Modem, GPS, PDA, HPC, STB, Router.Workstation, ISDN phone, laser printer and color fax machine;
• For 64-bit MCUs, we usually use for network operation, multimedia processing and other complex processing situations.

Part 2. 3 Kinds of Popular Health Detection Devices

Smart wearable devices with monitoring functions such as smart watches and bracelets. Smart wearable devices are a very popular class of smart products. Due to portability, practicality and aesthetics, many people wear smart watches and other products, and some young people consider it a fashion trend to wear smart watches, smart bracelets and other products. For the elderly, more generally will pay more attention to the functional applications of smart wearable devices.

Many smart wearable devices have health monitoring functions, such as heart rate monitoring, blood oxygen detection, temperature detection, sleep detection, Beijing high core launched the elderly health and safety watch even has electrocardiogram function, these health monitoring functions can meet the daily detection of the elderly, in addition, positioning, a key distress and other functions of the application scene is also very wide, easy to use, easy to wear, it is no wonder that many people will buy such products for parents to buy such products.

Smart smoke alarm, fall alarm and other home fixed monitoring alarm. These products are mainly for the elderly to provide a safe living environment, the growth of age brings in addition to experience, or the degradation of bodily functions. Many elderly people experience memory loss, even when using the simple appliances of home life, there will be unexpected situations. The elderly in my family have forgotten to turn off the fire when cooking, almost a fire incident, then if the installation of intelligent smoke alarms and other equipment in the home, you can avoid such accidents. Falls for the elderly should not be underestimated, if there is a timely alarm intelligent products, may be able to speak of this injury to a minimum.

Blood glucose meter, blood pressure meter and other home health detectors. Due to the growth of age, young and tired, the elderly more or less suffer from some diseases, it is necessary to always have a health detector at home. We all hope that the elderly can have a healthy retirement life, then we must prevent all kinds of diseases, timely detection and timely treatment.

Part 3. How MCUs Impact Health Monitoring Devices

New MCUs, including TI's MSP430FR2311 MCU, integrate more features than typical MCUs of the past. New integrated features include an analog front-end with several standard operational amplifiers, a very low-power transimpedance amplifier (TIA) capable of converting very low currents into voltage signals, a homogeneous block of ferroelectric random access memory (FRAM) instead of the typical RAM/Flash architecture, and an on-chip oscillator. That's a lot of functionality for a very small 3.5 mm x 4 mm package.

Not only does the entire system meet the demanding space requirements of the application, but the very sensitive TIA makes the device extremely accurate and avoids false readings, which is a necessity in the health industry. solutions in the industry. The lower input leakage current allows the TIA to sense lower currents, making the device more sensitive to the parameters being measured. The low power TIA also extends the battery life of the device.

The unified FRAM memory architecture means developers don't have to take up code storage in flash versus data record storage in RAM. A large block of FRAM allows the system designer to determine the ratio of code to data storage that best suits the application.

Of course, the next generation of health monitoring devices may evolve into multifunctional devices. For example, some monitors now measure ultraviolet (UV) intensity, warning users of conditions that may cause sunburn. Sensors may be used to measure temperature and humidity. Combining these functions could allow wristband-mounted devices to warn wearers of the need for sun protection and dangerous heat conditions. The next step might be to monitor skin temperature and heart rate, which could provide early warnings of heat exhaustion to construction workers.

Of course, thanks to high-performance MCUs such as the MSP430FR2311MCU, we could see an almost infinite variety of low-cost, high-precision, multifunctional health monitoring devices in the future.