The challenge for companies committed to developing medical diagnostic equipment is to provide consumers with high-quality and low-cost products. In terms of reducing medical costs and improving patient care services, the most important thing is to reduce the volume and improve the accuracy of these medical devices. In today's increasingly serious problem of population aging, the above needs are more urgent. According to the imdica report of IMS research company, the total sales of consumer medical devices are expected to exceed US $5 billion by 2011.
With the development and continuous improvement of the monitoring function of medical equipment, telemedicine providers can provide better diagnostic tools for home patients, emergency room paramedics and hospitals in several important areas of human health. Sphygmomanometers, blood glucose meters, defibrillators and other monitoring instruments need clear analog signals for accurate measurement, otherwise they may be life-threatening. The excellent design of analog signal path can help designers reduce the interference of external noise, expand the dynamic range and enhance the accuracy. In addition, in terms of component selection, designers must also choose carefully to meet the performance requirements of the final product.
High performance requirements in small packages
Previously, it was generally believed that medical equipment in hospitals and clinics was more accurate than portable instruments used at home. However, new technological trends are rapidly reversing this view. The users of the new portable medical devices are not only ordinary consumers, but also patients with deep scientific and technological understanding. Therefore, the needs of customers are no longer limited to taking body temperature, ECG and blood pressure. What customers need is a full range of nursing and measurement functions.
In order to meet people's urgent demand for home medical diagnostic instruments, equipment suppliers are relying on advanced inventory management and innovative design to enhance market competitiveness, and equip products with more functions to win more users. In the field of developing home medical instruments, one factor is very important, which is the development time required from the initial design to the real launch of the product. Shortening the time to market can enable manufacturers' products to seize the market. Whether the development cycle can be shortened depends on whether the design of system designers is flexible and cost-effective.
Process technology affects system design
Although electrical specifications are the main factor for designers to select components, the process used to manufacture integrated circuits is also important. For example, a typical blood glucose meter usually needs to be equipped with an operational amplifier with very low input bias current. Most designers will choose JFET amplifier. However, they should consider the temperature before making a decision.
Because JFET has a very low initial input bias, it is vulnerable to temperature changes. For every 10 C rise, the input bias will approximately double. To calculate the drift of the input bias, use the following formula (reference 1).
Ib(T)Ib(T0) x 2(T-T0)/10
For example, a JFET Input Operational Amplifier (such as National Semiconductor's lf411) has an input bias current of 50pA at 25 C, while a better option is National Semiconductor's lmp7731, which is a bipolar input operational amplifier with an input bias current of 1.5na. Through the above formula, we can quickly calculate that the input bias current of lf411 becomes 3.2na at 85 C, which is twice that of lmp7731.
Trade off of evaluation system
Speed, noise and power consumption may be equally important for some designs. A low-noise device will consume more current, while a low-power device can only provide limited bandwidth. One way to overcome these problems is to use inverse compensation amplifiers in appropriate applications. Compared with the stable unit gain and high speed, the advantage of the anti compensation amplifier is that it can provide a large bandwidth without affecting the power consumption.
Inverse compensation operational amplifier is most suitable for current voltage conversion (transimpedance) circuit. In medical instruments, one of the most common applications is to measure the oxygen content in blood cells, which is called SpO2 or saturated or peripheral oxygen. Figure 1 shows the block diagram of SpO2 module, in which the anti compensation amplifier (TIA) is used to convert the current from the photodiode into voltage.
Figure 1 typical block diagram of SpO2 module
Use shortcuts to shorten design time
The most important parameter of medical instruments is noise, which can cause serious interference to the circuit itself and nearby equipment. Calculating noise is a tedious task, especially when you want to calculate the overall impact of signal path on signal-to-noise ratio from power supply, amplifier, data converter and external components.
Generally speaking, medical instrument circuits tend to work at a lower frequency, so the designers of these systems usually pay more attention to the noise in the frequency band of 0.1 to 10Hz, also known as peak to peak noise. Unfortunately, some data sheets do not provide time domain noise (peak to peak) values, but only typical charts of voltage or current noise density. In addition to waiting for the circuit supplier to provide measurement data, there is a fast method to help calculate the peak to peak noise.
Suppose you intend to use lmp7731 of national semiconductor to calculate the noise of peak to peak (0.1 to 10Hz) voltage. First, select a point in the frequency range within the specified frequency band, such as 1Hz, and the value in the comparison curve is 5.1nv / Hz (Fig. 2). Then use the following formula to calculate the root mean square value (RMS) of noise: Formula 1: ENRMS = "enf" ln (10 / 0.1), Where enf is the noise at 1Hz. The total root mean square noise of 10.9nv can be obtained through the above formula. If you want to calculate the peak to peak noise, you only need to multiply this root mean square value by 6.6 to obtain 72.2nv. The result of this estimation is quite good, which is close to the specification 78nv listed in the data sheet.
Fig. 2 Relationship between input voltage noise and frequency of lmp7731 frequency and voltage noise
If the voltage noise density diagram in the data sheet does not represent the noise value at 1Hz, you can use the following simple equation (equation 2) to calculate the value at a certain frequency.
Where ENB is broadband noise (usually the value at 1kHz), and FCE is the 1 / F inflection point. As for F is the frequency of interest, in our case, it is 1Hz.
For example, the broadband noise of lmv851 of national semiconductor is 10nv / Hz at 10kHz. In order to calculate the root mean square noise, first determine the value of 1 / F inflection point (FCE) from the chart. Using the voltage noise density diagram in the data sheet, it can be found that FCE is approximately equal to 300Hz. Then, using the above formula, we can calculate en = 10 * (300 / 1) = 173nv Hz, which is the voltage noise at 1Hz. Finally, substitute this value into Formula 1 and multiply the result by 6.6 to get 2.4 Peak to peak noise of V.
Another consideration is current noise. Generally speaking, if the impedance of the power supply is not very large (> 100k ), you can still get a very close calculation result without considering the current noise, just like the above example. However, if the impedance of the power supply is large, the same technique must be used to calculate the current noise, and the voltage and current noise must be added in the form of root mean square value.
Requirements for determining speed
Just as the noise of operational amplifier is very important to the resolution of ADC, so is the bandwidth to maintain the accuracy of the system. In order to limit the error to 1 / 2 least significant bit (LSB), a fast check is needed to determine whether the bandwidth of the amplifier is sufficient. In addition to using complex and generic guidance, you can also use the resolution of the analog / digital converter to quickly calculate the results. The method is to use 1 / 2 (n / 2) and multiply the result by the amplifier frequency at - 3dB (reference 2).
Through the above shortcut and a 14 bit ADC, FEFF = 0.007813 * f-3db is obtained in this example. For the operational amplifier (LMP7711) with configurable gain of 10 in Fig. 3, the frequency at - 3dB is 1.7MHz. In this way, the maximum bandwidth (at 1 / 2 LSB error) is equal to 0.007813 * 1.7e6 = 13.3khz.
Fig. 3 block diagram of portable electrocardiograph
Monitor device and communication device
Most of the newer medical diagnostic instruments are equipped with wireless communication function. Modern electrocardiograph (EKG or ECG) can transmit patient data to doctor's clinic or hospital in a few minutes through personal electronic manual account (PDA) or other computer peripherals. Despite the benefits of wireless data transmission, such devices may cause serious interference to medical devices and make their readings wrong.
In order to avoid this interference, a filter must be used. However, adding filters will not only increase the volume of the equipment, but also increase the design cost. A more cost-effective and fast way is to use components (including filters) that can suppress radio frequency (RF) noise.
epilogue
Nowadays, the trend in the field of medical equipment is to provide consumers with higher value products, that is, home care instruments that are cheap and high-quality and can quickly provide diagnostic results. With the continuous progress of technology, more and more medical devices will transmit data from patients' homes to doctors' clinics in real time through computers. In addition, with the demand of users for more functions, the accuracy requirements for portable medical devices will be further improved to achieve more accurate diagnosis, which will rely on the continuous innovation, long-term development and commitment to comprehensive solutions made by designers.

The emergence of portable medical devices has filled the shortcomings of difficult and annoying medical treatment in China. People can diagnose themselves at home, eliminating the necessity of going to the hospital and reducing hospitalization. At the same time, it can also reduce medical costs
At the same time, portable medical equipment can monitor vital signs before sending patients to the hospital, make the heart pacing again, and use ultrasound to check the internal situation of the body. Its goal is to contribute to the development of easy-to-use and interoperable home medical devices, and provide diagnostic data so that patients can obtain insurance compensation, etc
Let's analyze the mechanism and characteristics of portable medical devices, peel them layer by layer, and slowly "sting" our eyes
Block diagram of portable medical equipment:
Jn5148 - ultra low power consumption, high performance 32-bit MCU combined with IEEE802.15.4 compliant transceiver, supporting ZigBee & Jennet
For low-power wireless network applications, it has an enhanced 32-bit RISC processor to achieve high coding efficiency through variable width instructions; A multi-level instruction pipeline realizes low-power operation through programmable clock speed and various sleep modes. The device includes 128 KB ROM, 128 KB ram and various combinations of analog and digital peripherals. At the same time, the working current is less than 18 Ma, allowing it to work directly through the button battery... It is also extremely suitable for ZigBee Pro Network and intelligent metering
Advantages and features:
1. First class radio current consumption and a wide range of user peripherals
2. Adopt multi-functional 32-bit RISC CPU to realize high performance and low power consumption, and can run applications and ZigBee pro at the same time
3. The system BOM has few components, low cost and very low current, which can realize the solution of ultra long battery life
It can compensate for various changes, such as the change of humidity or pollution degree on the electrode. At the same time, it can detect the change of capacitance on the remote sensing board, so as to realize close operation without contact.
Pca8885ts - 8-channel capacitive touch and proximity sensor with automatic calibration and very low power consumption.
An 8-channel capacitive touch and proximity sensor detects capacitance changes on the remote sensing panel using the patented (edisen) method. The change of static capacitance is automatically compensated by continuous automatic calibration. The remote sensing panel can be connected to the IC through coaxial cable. 8 input channels work independently of each other. The sensors can also be arranged in a matrix through built-in options: interruption occurs only when two channels are activated at the same time, so as to prevent redundant channel output when both channels have been activated
Advantages and features:
1. Support matrix array sensor and remote connection of sensing plate
2. Adjustable response time and sensitivity (continuous automatic calibration, digital processing method, can be used with plexiglass with a maximum thickness of 6 mm)
3. Direct and latch switch mode, I C ultra fast mode (FM ) compatible interface
Pcf85063a - micro encapsulated real-time clock / calendar with alarm function and SPI bus
A CMOS real-time clock (RTC) and calendar, most suitable for low-power applications. The offset register allows fine adjustment of the clock. All addresses and data can be bi-directional I through two lines C bus serial transmission. The maximum data rate is 400 kbit / s. The register address will be automatically incremented after each write or read of data bytes... It is also suitable for various digital products and mobile devices
Advantages and features:
1. 400 kHz double line I Programmable clock output of C bus interface and peripheral devices
2. Alarm function, countdown timer, minute and half minute interrupt
3. Internal power on reset (POR), programmable offset register for frequency adjustment
Accurate and reliable, long-term stability, positive temperature coefficient and fault protection characteristics
PCT2075-I C bus FM , accuracy 1 , digital temperature sensor and temperature monitor
The accuracy is 1 C in the temperature range of 25 C to 100 C. Provide over temperature detection output and integrate a series of data registers: configuration register for memory device setting; A temperature register for storing digital temperature readings; Set point register for storing programmable over temperature shutdown and hysteresis limits and programmable temperature sensor sampling time tidle, which can be accessed through two-wire serial I The bus ultra fast mode (FM ) interface communicates with the controller
Advantages and features:
1. 1 MHz ultra fast mode (FM ) 30 Ma SDA driver can connect more devices on one bus, and is downward compatible with fast mode and standard mode
2. It has programmable temperature threshold and hysteresis set point during operation, and the power supply current is less than 1.0 in off mode A. It can save electric energy
3. When powered on, it can be used alone as a thermostat, an 11 bit ADC with a temperature resolution of 0.125 C
Pca6408a - low voltage, 8-bit I with interrupt output, reset and configuration registers C bus and SMBus I / O extender
Pass I C bus interface provides remote I / O expansion for most microcontroller series. When additional I / O is required while minimizing interconnection, NXP I / O expander provides a simple solution and has built-in level switching function, which makes these devices extremely flexible in a mixed signal environment where incompatible I / O voltages need to communicate
Advantages and features:
1. The latch output has a maximum driving capacity of 25 mA, which is used to directly drive the LED
2. Schmidt trigger operation allows slow input transition on SCL and SDA inputs and brings better switching noise immunity
3. When powered on, make all channels configured as input without pulse interference
Tfa9881uk - 3.4 w PDM input class D audio amplifier
Using 9 bumps WLCSP (wafer level chip package), with 400 M to receive audio and control settings through this interface. The dedicated silent mode is used to configure the control settings of the device, turn off the transition to the working mode, and trigger when the clock signal is detected... It is also extremely suitable for portable navigation devices, mobile phones and computers
Advantages and features:
1. The second-order closed-loop structure provides excellent audio performance and high supply voltage ripple suppression
2. It can completely prevent short circuit at both ends of the load and short circuit with the power line
3. Current limit that can avoid sound leakage, thermal protection function, undervoltage and overvoltage protection
2n7002bk - 60 V, 350 Ma n-channel trench MOSFET
N-channel enhanced field effect transistor (FET) is packaged with small SOT23 (to-236ab) surface mount device (SMD) with MOSFET technology. It has ESD protection up to 2 kV, compatible logic level and very fast switching. At the same time, it is especially suitable for: high-speed line driver and on-off circuit
Discrete semiconductor, DC / DC converter, LDOS
Ip3319cx6 - single channel common mode filter with integrated ESD protection network
Logic gate, data selector, GPIO, analog switch, LED controller, LCD driver, LED diode
Bza408b - Quadruple bidirectional ESD transient voltage suppressor
Today, many consumer medical devices simply display health monitoring results, leaving interpretation and recording to end users and their doctors. The new equipment can automatically record and transmit results through network connection.
At the same time, medical devices that help consumers have the following characteristics: simple and easy to use, highly reliable, safe, convenient connection, low power consumption (long battery life), support for a variety of voltages (especially low voltage), high measurement accuracy, small size, high cost performance
With so many advantages, so broad prospects and so practical performance, I believe no one can resist the naked Temptation
Do not forget the original heart, we can always... If you have thoughts, there will be repercussions

The challenge for companies committed to developing medical diagnostic equipment is to provide consumers with high-quality and low-cost products. In terms of reducing medical costs and improving patient care services, the most important thing is to reduce the volume and improve the accuracy of these medical devices. In today's increasingly serious population aging problem, the above demand is more urgent
With the development and continuous improvement of the monitoring function of medical equipment, telemedicine providers can provide better diagnostic tools for home patients, emergency room paramedics and hospitals in several important areas of human health. Sphygmomanometers, blood glucose meters, defibrillators and other monitoring instruments need clear analog signals for accurate measurement, otherwise they may be life-threatening. The excellent design of analog signal path can help designers reduce the interference of external noise, expand the dynamic range and enhance the accuracy. In addition, in terms of component selection, designers must also choose carefully to meet the performance requirements of the final product.
High performance requirements in small packages
Previously, it was generally believed that medical equipment in hospitals and clinics was more accurate than portable instruments used at home. However, new technological trends are rapidly reversing this view. The users of the new portable medical devices are not only ordinary consumers, but also patients with deep scientific and technological understanding. Therefore, the needs of customers are no longer limited to taking body temperature, ECG and blood pressure. What customers need is a full range of nursing and measurement functions.
In order to meet people's urgent demand for home medical diagnostic instruments, equipment suppliers are relying on advanced inventory management and innovative design to enhance market competitiveness, and equip products with more functions to win more users. In the field of developing home medical instruments, one factor is very important, which is the development time required from the initial design to the real launch of the product. Shortening the time to market can enable manufacturers' products to seize the market. Whether the development cycle can be shortened depends on whether the design of system designers is flexible and cost-effective.
Process technology affects system design
Although electrical specifications are the main factor for designers to select components, the process used to manufacture integrated circuits is also important. For example, a typical blood glucose meter usually needs to be equipped with an operational amplifier with very low input bias current. Most designers will choose JFET amplifier. However, they should consider the temperature before making a decision.
Because JFET has a very low initial input bias, it is vulnerable to temperature changes. For every 10 C rise, the input bias will approximately double. To calculate the drift of the input bias, use the following formula (reference 1).
Ib(T)Ib(T0) x 2(T-T0)/10
For example, a JFET Input Operational Amplifier (such as National Semiconductor's lf411) has an input bias current of 50pA at 25 C, while a better option is National Semiconductor's lmp7731, which is a bipolar input operational amplifier with an input bias current of 1.5na. Through the above formula, we can quickly calculate that the input bias current of lf411 becomes 3.2na at 85 C, which is twice that of lmp7731.
Trade off of evaluation system
Speed, noise and power consumption may be equally important for some designs. A low-noise device will consume more current, while a low-power device can only provide limited bandwidth. One way to overcome these problems is to use inverse compensation amplifiers in appropriate applications. Compared with the stable unit gain and high speed, the advantage of the anti compensation amplifier is that it can provide a large bandwidth without affecting the power consumption.
Inverse compensation operational amplifier is most suitable for current voltage conversion (transimpedance) circuit. In medical instruments, one of the most common applications is to measure the oxygen content in blood cells, which is called SpO2 or saturated or peripheral oxygen. Figure 1 shows the block diagram of SpO2 module, in which the anti compensation amplifier (TIA) is used to convert the current from the photodiode into voltage.
Figure 1 typical block diagram of SpO2 module
Use shortcuts to shorten design time
The most important parameter of medical instruments is noise, which can cause serious interference to the circuit itself and nearby equipment. Calculating noise is a tedious task, especially when you want to calculate the overall impact of signal path on signal-to-noise ratio from power supply, amplifier, data converter and external components.
Generally speaking, medical instrument circuits tend to work at a lower frequency, so the designers of these systems usually pay more attention to the noise in the frequency band of 0.1 to 10Hz, also known as peak to peak noise. Unfortunately, some data sheets do not provide time domain noise (peak to peak) values, but only typical charts of voltage or current noise density. In addition to waiting for the circuit supplier to provide measurement data, there is a fast method to help calculate the peak to peak noise.
Suppose you intend to use lmp7731 of national semiconductor to calculate the noise of peak to peak (0.1 to 10Hz) voltage. First, select a point in the frequency range within the specified frequency band, such as 1Hz, and the value in the comparison curve is 5.1nv / Hz (Fig. 2). Then use the following formula to calculate the root mean square value (RMS) of noise: Formula 1: ENRMS = "enf" ln (10 / 0.1), Where enf is the noise at 1Hz. The total root mean square noise of 10.9nv can be obtained through the above formula. If you want to calculate the peak to peak noise, you only need to multiply this root mean square value by 6.6 to obtain 72.2nv. The result of this estimation is quite good, which is close to the specification 78nv listed in the data sheet.
Fig. 2 Relationship between input voltage noise and frequency of lmp7731 frequency and voltage noise
If the voltage noise density diagram in the data sheet does not represent the noise value at 1Hz, you can use the following simple equation (equation 2) to calculate the value at a certain frequency.
Where ENB is broadband noise (usually the value at 1kHz), and FCE is the 1 / F inflection point. As for F is the frequency of interest, in our case, it is 1Hz.

Capacitive detection technology continues to be favored in traditional man-machine interface applications, such as laptop touch panel, MP3 player, touch screen display and short-range detector. In addition to using capacitive sensors to replace mechanical buttons, a little imagination and the basic principle of man-machine interface design will enable many other applications to use this technology. Figure 1 shows examples of application concepts that can be improved by using human contact detection.Figure 1. Device using capacitive sensor electrodes


For the device shown in Fig. 1, it is often advantageous to know the contact quality between the device and the skin before starting the device or measuring. These devices include medical probes that need to be close to the skin, biopotential electrode sensors, or housings for fixing catheters. In order to determine the contact conditions, several green capacitive sensor electrodes in the figure can be directly embedded into the plastic shell of the device during injection molding production. The host microcontroller reads some status registers on the capacitive sensor controller IC, which indicate how close the capacitive sensor is to the skin. Then, the basic detection algorithm running on the host microcontroller processes the status register information to determine whether the contact between each sensor electrode and the skin is appropriate.
In the traditional man-machine interface application of capacitive detection, people usually touch the sensor electrode by finger touch. The example in Fig. 1 uses a capacitive sensor in an unconventional way, and the user places a device containing a capacitive detection electrode on the human body. Developing such applications is simple, but in order to build a stable and reliable system, some key guidelines should be followed
Capacitance digital controller. To develop high-performance contact detection applications, we must first select a suitable capacitor digital controller (CDC). For the application shown in Fig. 1, the contact between the device surface and the skin is directly measured by a slight change in energy, which is distributed in the capacitive sensor electrode array and occurs when the device contacts the skin. The accuracy of this measurement depends on the sensitivity of the CDC analog front end and the number of sensor electrodes. The accuracy of capacitive sensor manufactured by traditional PCB process is usually in the range of 50 FF to 20 PF, so the high-precision measurement technology using 16 bit CDC is ideal.
When selecting CDC, we should first clarify some key characteristics, such as high-resolution analog front-end with 16 bit ADC, programmable sensor sensitivity setting, programmable sensor offset control, on-chip environment calibration, sufficient capacitive input channels supporting an ideal number of sensor electrodes, and integrated design without using external RC devices for sensor calibration. These features support reliable and flexible applications and bring the best user experience. For example, programmable sensitivity allows the interface designer to preset the best sensor sensitivity for a specific application rather than adopting a fixed solution that may lead to poor sensitivity. Programmable offset control is another important feature for interface designers, because the offset value of sensor boards in each production batch may be slightly different. The quick preview feature allows you to change the host firmware settings before putting a new sensor board into mass production. For applications where ambient temperature or humidity is expected to change, on-chip environmental calibration can achieve a more reliable solution. Note that the electrode sensor is constructed using standard PCB copper traces; The properties of the substrate will change with the change of temperature and humidity, so the baseline level of the sensor output will be changed. If CDC supports on-chip calibration, this baseline drift can be dynamically compensated during product use.


Small electrodes require high sensitivity. The objective of measurement is to determine the closeness of the equipment to the skin; The better the contact quality between the skin and the equipment, the more accurate the reading of the equipment. The accuracy of measurement depends on the number (the more electrodes, the higher resolution) and size of electrode sensors distributed in the contact area of the device. For the application shown in Figure 1, the surface area of the device is generally very small, and designers need to use small sensor electrodes when developing applications.
In order to reliably measure the small capacitance change related to the small sensor electrode (generally less than 50 PF), a high-sensitivity analog front-end controller is required. Remember that the type and thickness of plastic covering material will further affect the small signal emitted by the sensor through the plastic. The analog front-end measurement of the controller must have sufficient sensitivity to measure this small signal, and maintain a good signal margin between the measured signal and the threshold level detection setting under all operating conditions (such as different power supply voltage, temperature and humidity, and the thickness and type of coverage material). Low signal margin will increase the risk of false detection and sensor instability. In order to minimize risk, when using CDC with 16 bit ADC, a margin of at least 1000 LSB shall be maintained between the sensor baseline level (the sensor is not in contact with the skin) and the contact threshold level.
Ad7147 and ad7148 captouch programmable controllers are used for single electrode capacitance sensors. They have 16 bit resolution, can carry out nano farad level measurement, and can set 16 programmable threshold detection level values in the full-scale range. Both controllers support 3 mm & Tides under 1 mm plastic covering material with a dielectric constant of 3.0; 3 mm small sensor electrode while still maintaining the full-scale signal margin of 1000 ADC LSB. The full-scale signal margin is the difference between the sensor output without skin contact and with skin contact.
Maintain reliable performance. The capacitive sensor electrode is made of standard copper material or flexible material on PCB. The properties of this material change with temperature and humidity. This change will offset the baseline level (the electrical average of all sensor thresholds is based on the baseline level). A large baseline offset increases the risk that the contact threshold level is too low or too high (too low or too high depends on the direction of baseline offset), which will cause false contact error, or make the threshold level either too sensitive or not sensitive enough, resulting in the instability of contact state. In order to maintain the original signal contact threshold detection level margin (sensitivity) of the sensor, CDC needs to automatically track the amplitude of baseline offset error and readjust the threshold setting accordingly. The example in Figure 2 shows how the threshold levels of ad7147 and ad7148 are automatically tracked and adjusted for baseline offset changes caused by changes in environmental conditions.
Figure 2. Ad7147 / ad7148 on chip environment calibrationEliminate measurement errors. The modification of capacitive sensor electrode array in the device may cause space constraints and force the designer to place the CDC away from the capacitive sensor. This will increase the length of parallel sensor routing and make the wiring dense, which is not conducive to capacitive detection applications, because routing at different DC potentials will form the stray coupling path shown in Fig. 3a. The grounding layer of PCB cannot prevent this situation because the wiring and grounding layer are at different DC potentials, which will still form stray capacitance (Fig. 3b).Figure 3. The path of stray capacitance shows the results of the following parallel routing: parallel routing (a) without copper pouring layer, parallel routing (b) on grounding copper pouring layer, and parallel routing (c) on copper pouring layer with the same DC potential as the routing
To eliminate the stray capacitance error, one method is to surround the adjacent routing with a layer driven by the DC level (the DC level is the same as the DC level of the capacitive sensor electrode and routing). The ad7147 and ad7148 devices eliminate stray capacitance by providing a dedicated acschield output with this function, as shown in Figure 3C.
Consumer health care equipment such as spa and skin care products are entering ordinary families from professional institutions, and users are no longer technicians who are specially trained and familiar with products and their applications. Therefore, many of these products need a more intelligent user interface to enable untrained users to master the correct product use methods. Capacitive detection provides new choices for user interface designers, enabling them to explore various innovative methods to meet new user interface requirements. Capacitive digital technology provides contact information between capacitive sensor electrode and skin, which can be used to maintain the best product performance and safety.

Power supply standardIEC 60601-1:2005 and accompanying documents specify the safety and basic functional requirements of the power supply. The standard appears in the form of ANSI / AAMI document in the United States and in the form of "euronorm" in Europe and around the world, with some local differences. Since January 2021, the latest revision (a1:2012, a2:2020) has updated the standard, deleted outdated references, corrected errors and made it better consistent with IEC 62368-1. The current medical EMC standard IEC 60601-2 is the 4th Edition.Built in medical power standard


AC powered medical devices can have "built-in" power supplies or lower power external adapters. If it is an internal product, the product designer should consider high voltage and high energy, and usually choose to buy a "medically certified" power supply. However, the final product is the product certified for this application, so there are other considerations, such as labels, connectors, internal wiring of power supply and fuses.
Due to grounding, external wiring and interference from other noise sources, the built-in power supply conforming to EMC standards cannot be guaranteed to pass the test. A common practice is to add another EMI filter at the AC inlet, which may be included in the connector. However, it should be noted that the leakage current limit should not be exceeded. For the most stringent CF product rating, the leakage current limit can be as low as 10 a. The leakage of external filter may directly lead to the internal leakage of AC power supply, there is a risk of interaction between external filter and internal filter, and may even worsen EMI.
Secure power solutionsThe safe solution should select the target application and specify a power supply with 2 x MOPP certification and EMC compatible performance. For example, power supplies from recom racm230-g, racm550-g and the recently released racm-1200v series.Their peak or rated power is 230W, 550W and 1200W respectively. When fans are not allowed (usually in medical environments), these products can be floor cooled. All products have 2x MOPP / 250V AC rating to prevent leakage to ground (racm550 / 1200). The safety barrier in each recom power supply is shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: safety fence racm230 / 550 / 1200 seriesFigure 3: a 2x MOPP DC / DC converter provides SIP / SOP isolationUsing a medically certified power supply (such as the power supply of recom) is a reliable way to ensure that the safety and EMC standards required by various medical application environments are met. It would be a lower overall cost approach if development, certification costs and time to market were taken into account.


Recom is a good choice when selecting AC / DC power supply for medical equipment. Eurotime electronics, as a distribution partner of recom, provides local inventory and technical support.Original title: eurotime classroom | AC / DC power supply in medical applicationsThe source of the article: WeChat official account: Euro time electronic RS] welcome to add attention! Please indicate the source of the article.