Ultra low-power smart medical sensor node for in-body Biomonitoring

New advances in biosensor and electronic technologies will merge in new health assistance paradigms strongly based on the remote Biomonitoring. Biomedical circuit and systems have much to say on this, as for example the central venous catheters (CVC). Central venous catheters are commonly used in clinical practice to improve a patient´s quality of life. Nevertheless, there remains a large risk of infection associated with microbial biofilm (about 80% of all human bacterial infections). The standardization bodies, the radiofrequency devices and the biosensor technology are taking their positions, and the integration of all that effort is the work proposed in this paper. An ultra-low power active medical implant is presented for in-body monitoring of Electrical Bioimpedances (EBI) based sensors. A detailed and exhaustive lifetime evaluation has been done based on two typical monitoring parameters: the frequency of the internal sensor measuring and the frequency of external communication requests. The results show up to 20 months lifetime powered with a 50mA coin-cell battery.