Physiological Data Microcontroller With Onboard Wavelet Compression
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Solution Overview
Problem
Wearable biosensors face challenges in maximizing sensor performance while minimizing size, weight, and power consumption, particularly in recording and storing physiological data due to limited internal storage and processing capabilities, which is exacerbated by the need for high-quality data recording and storage of physiological signals like electrodermal activity (EDA).
Innovation Solution
A microcontroller with an ADC, sample buffer, and non-volatile memory that performs data compression using a multi-level discrete wavelet transformation (DWT) to transform and compress EDA signals, allowing for onboard storage without external memory or wireless transmission, thereby reducing power consumption and size.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Quantity of substance
If external memory devices or wireless transmission are used to store physiological data, then data storage capacity is improved, but device size, weight, and power consumption increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines the data compression functionality directly into the microcontroller unit (MCU), merging what would traditionally be separate components (sensor, processor, compression algorithm, and memory) into a single integrated device. This eliminates the need for external memory devices or wireless transmission hardware, reducing device weight while maintaining adequate data storage capacity through efficient on-board compression and storage.
2Quantity of substance
If external memory devices or wireless transmission are used to store physiological data, then data storage capacity is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent integrates data compression and storage functionality into the MCU, eliminating the need for separate external memory devices, wireless transmission modules, or additional processing units. This single-integration approach reduces device complexity by removing multiple components and their interconnections while maintaining adequate data storage capacity through on-board memory and compression algorithms.
3Quantity of substance
If data compression is applied to physiological signals, then data storage requirements are reduced, but signal distortion increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies data compression algorithms that transform physiological signal parameters into a compressed representation, reducing the amount of data that needs to be stored while preserving the essential characteristics of the signal. By carefully selecting and tuning compression parameters, the system achieves significant data reduction while maintaining signal fidelity within acceptable limits for the intended application.
Data Source
AI summary
A microcontroller for recording and storing physiological data includes an analog-to-digital converter for converting analog physiological sensor signals to digital signals, a sample buffer for holding a temporal sequence of the digital signals, a central processing unit (CPU), and a non-volatile memory. The non-volatile memory includes (i) a code storage encoding machine-readable data compression instructions that, when executed by the CPU, control the CPU to (a) transform the temporal sequence of the digital signals to produce transformed physiological data characterized by a set of transformation coefficients and (b) compress the set of transformation coefficients to generate compressed physiological data, and (ii) a data storage configured to contain several different instances of the compressed physiological data respectively associated with several different instances of the temporal sequence of the digital signals.