Unit-II HARDWARE FOR BAN

CBM341 BODY AREA NETWORKS

UNIT II HARDWARE FOR BAN
Processor-Low Power MCUs, Mobile Computing MCUs, Integrated
processor with radio transceiver, Memory, Antenna-PCB antenna, Wire
antenna, Ceramic antenna, External antenna, Sensor Interface, Power
sources- Batteries and fuel cells for sensor nodes.

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Integrated processor with radio transceiver
 Recently, System-on-Chip (SoC) Processors or integrated processors
with radio transceivers are becoming popular due to their miniaturized
size and simplicity in board design.
 One exemplar is the Berkeley Spec, which is a custom-made processor
with an 8-bit RISC processor combined with a FSK (Frequency-Shift
Keying) transceiver.
 By integrating the radio transceiver, the size of the Spec is only 5mm^2.
Since then, several commercial integrated MCUs have been introduced,
and WSN platforms such as iMote1, MITes, RFRAIN, RISE and
uPart0140ilmt are designed with this type of MCU to facilitate size
reduction.

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Integrated processor with radio transceiver
 In addition to the radio transceiver, recent research has taken a further
step to miniaturize the WSN node by integrating sensors and power
supply onto the MCUs.
 One example of this is the SAND (Small Autonomous Network
Devices) platform proposed by Philips research, which is a multiple
stacked die SoC.
 It consists of sensors, signal processing, data storage, power
management, low bit-rate wireless communication and a power source.
 Similar 3D stacked sensor system has been proposed in IMEC’s
Human++ project and Match-X’s VDMA system

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Memory
 Since limited Random Access Memory (RAM) is provided by MCUs,
most WSN platforms are designed with an external flash memory or
Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory (EEPROM).
 Due to the non-volatile nature of the EEPROM, it is used in most
embedded systems for storing configuration information because it
does not require power to retain the stored data.
 It is also used as an immediate storage for sensor readings.

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Memory
 For instance, in order to perform feature extraction or filtering of the
sampled data, the EEPROM can be used as a processing buffer for
these algorithms.
 Another use of the EEPROM is for storing program images.
 For example, Deluge, a TinyOS network-programming tool, uses the
external flash memory to store the program image in order to enable
dynamic reprogramming of the sensor nodes.

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Antenna
 To achieve a balance between flexibility, miniaturization and
performance, four different types of antenna have been adopted in
current WSN platforms.

 PCB Antenna
 Wire Antenna
 Ceramic Antenna
 External Antenna

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PCB Antenna
 To minimize the manufacturing cost and facilitate the modular
design of sensor nodes, PCB (Printed Circuit Board) antennas have
been widely used in embedded systems such as RFID (Radio
Frequency Identification) applications.
 Telos and Tmote sky are designed with PCB antennas printed on the
circuit board. Figure illustrates a prototype BSN node with a PCB
antenna.

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Figure illustrates a prototype BSN node with a PCB antenna.

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PCB Antenna-Demerits
 Although printing the antenna onto the circuit board could reduce the
manufacturing cost, the performance of PCB antenna is relatively
poor due to the dielectric loss caused by poor circuit board material,
and noise induced by coupling with other lossy components and
circuit board traces.
 For this reason, additional mounting points for external antennas are
usually provided on these designs.

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Wire Antenna
 An alternative to minimizing the cost without losing the performance
is to use a simple wire antenna.
 Wire antenna is often in loop, monopole or dipole forms. Since the
wire antenna is located above the circuit board, it performs far better
than the PCB antenna.
 For BSN research, a wire antenna is preferred due to its simplicity
and flexibility. Mica2, Mica2Dot and BSN nodes are all designed
with wire antennas.
 However, as wire antennas require manual soldering, mass
production in large quantities can be problematic.

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Figure shows a BSN node with a λ/2 dipole
antenna (Wire Antenna)

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Ceramic Antenna
 To simplify manufacturing complexity and facilitate size reduction
whilst maintaining the quality of wireless communication, ceramic
antennas are often used in WSN platforms.
 Ceramic antennas are usually optimized for certain frequencies and
they are much smaller in size than wire and PCB antennas.
 For example, ProSpeckz and Ant are integrated with ceramic
antennas designed for Bluetooth (or 2.4GHz) devices.

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Figure shows a BSN node with an alternative ceramic antenna configuration.

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External Antenna
 To enhance the coverage of the sensor node, external antennas are also used
in WSN platforms.
 As external antennas are often isolated from noise induced by the circuit
board, a significantly higher performance can be achieved in practice.
 Due to the size of the external antenna and its associated mounting, they are
not practical for wearable applications.
 Figure demonstrates a prototype BSN node with an external antenna,
illustrating the comparative size of the antenna and the BSN node itself.

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External Antenna

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