Dr. ir. Valer Pop
imec/Holst Centre, Eindhoven, Netherlands
Recent advances in energy harvester and ultra-low-power technologies are making self-powered healthcare wireless autonomous transducer solutions a reality. Silicon is playing an important enabling role in this gradual but certain revolution of our healthcare system and silicon will be even more essential in view of the many challenges to make ubiquitous monitoring and real-time diagnostics a reality. By reviewing world-wide technology breakthroughs as well as healthcarerelated systems with wireless sensors in body-area-network configurations, it will be demonstrated that architectural level integration, power optimization and application oriented design is driving game-changing circuit and system innovation. Visionary body-area network applications such as wireless Electrocardiogram (ECG) will be discussed and live demonstrated. With every new generation of energy harvester and low-power technologies such wearable wireless systems will become less obtrusive and more autonomous.
