IDEAS: A MINIATURE LAB-IN-A-PILL MULTISENSOR

MICROSYSTEM


 
Tong Boon Tang, Erik
A. Johannessen, Lei Wang,

Alexander Astaras,
Mansour

Ahmadian, Li Cui, Alan F. Murray,


Jonathan M. Cooper,
Steve P. Beaumont, Brian W. Flynn, David R. S. Cumming

 School of Engineering and Electronics, The University of Edinburgh, UK
Dept.
 of Electronics and Electrical Engineering, The University of Glasgow, UK
Institute for System Level Integration, The ALBA Centre, Livingston, UK
Tel. 44-131-6505665, Fax 44-131-6506554, E-mail Tong-Boon.Tang@ee.ed.ac.uk

Abstract
A novel wireless multisensor microsystem comprising temperature, conductivity, pH
and dissolved oxygen sensors, a control chip and a 38.342 MHz transmitter is described
including designs and experimental results. This study (Lab-in-a-Pill) brings together
Lab-on-a-chip (LOC) technology and System-on-Chip (SoC) methodology. The first mi-
crosystem prototype consumes 6.3 mW of power in a miniature capsule which measures 16
mm  55 mm.

1 INTRODUCTION
In general, Lab-on-a-chip (LOC) technology can be described as a technology integrates com-
plex laboratory sensors and sample-handling capabilities onto a glass or silicon plate [1].
Driven by the current LOC technological and social-medical trends, there is a growing in-
terest in electronic health care [2]. Applications have ranged from telemedicine to bioanalysis,
from patient monitoring to implantable devices for either functional regeneration or disease
treatment or signal recording. The main reason for such wide use is that LOC fulfills several
important requirements: it is physically small, robust, cheap and disposable.

A multisensor microsystem as defined in [3] may contain transducers, appropriate interface

circuitries, a microprocessor core and a digital signal processing (DSP) circuitry. A wireless
microsystem will further require a radio frequency (RF) transmitter if simplex communication
is employed. Under such circumstances, a low power consumption and form-factor design
and implementation methodology is desired. System-on-Chip (SoC) is one such methodology
whereby a system containing many Intellectual Property (IP) blocks can be developed rap-
idly [4].

The IDEAS (Integrated Diagnostics for Environmental and Analytical Systems) project aims
to combine the LOC technology with SoC methodology to build real-time intelligent meas-
urement and monitoring tools. The target format is a multisensor microsystem contained in a
miniaturised, ingestible capsule. Example applications included wastewater analysis [5] and in
situ studies of the gastro-intestinal (GI) tract [6].

In this paper, we present our Lab-in-a-Pill through our first prototype from the system specifica-
tions to the test results. Since design re-use is an essential component of the SoC methodology,
we anticipate that this first implementation will form the basis for future development.
2 SYSTEM SPECIFICATIONS
The microsystem consists of five main components, namely a multisensor array, analogue sig-
nal conditioning circuits, a digital signal processor, a RF transmitter and a power source. For
this first prototype, both the analogue and digital blocks have been implemented as an applic-
ation specific integrated circuit (ASIC) on a single silicon chip while the remaining blocks are
on three separate chips. Interconnection between the chips is achieved through manual wire
bonding to a glass-fibre substrate or by direct connection to adjacent chips. The microsys-
tem is eventually integrated into a biocompatible capsule which is a solid chemical resistant
polyether-terketone (PEEK) coating.

(a) Block diagram (b) Packaged capsule

Figure 1: (a) A block diagram of the microsystem in the capsule, (b) a schematic of the final
packaged proposed microsystem.

2.1 Microelectronic Sensors

The sensors are fabricated on two 5 mm 5 mm silicon chips where one is a modified commer-
cial product and the other is made in-house. The first chip comprises a pH sensor (by ESIEE,
France), a PN-junction silicon diode temperature sensor and a dual-electrode direct-contact
conductivity sensor. The second chip comprises a dissolved oxygen sensor and an optional
NiCr resistance thermometer. These two chips are located at the front end of the capsule, as
illustrated in Figure 1b.

Figure 2: Optical micrograph of the two sensor chips. The scale-bar corresponds to 1mm.
2.2 Control Chip
The ASIC is fabricated by Austria Microsystems (AMS), using a 3 V, 2-poly, 3-metal 0.6 mi-
cron CMOS process. It includes analogue signal conditioning circuits, analogue multiplexers,
a 10-bit analogue-to-digital converter (ADC), a 10-bit digital-to-analogue converter (DAC), a
RC relaxation oscillator and digit modules for microsystem scheduling, coding and transmitter
control. Each channel of data is sampled with 8-bit resolution and communicated off-chip to
the transmitter as a single interleaved data stream.

In additional, a simple DSP data compression algorithm has been implemented to achieve low-
power serial bit-stream transmission. The algorithm decides when transmission is required by
comparing the most recent sample with the previous sample. This approach is particularly
effective when the measuring environment is quiescent, a commonly encountered situation in
many applications.

The tools used for the VLSI design of the control chip are (i) Synopsys DC and DA for digital
synthesis of Verilog/VHDL RTL codes, and (ii) Cadence DFII and Silicon Ensemble for ana-
logue simulation and back-end design tasks. The design kit is provided by AMS because of
its well-defined analogue and digital IP blocks, such as ADC and DAC that have been used to
build our design.

Figure 3: An optical micrograph of the ASIC. It is a pad-limited design, with 16,000 gates and
a size of 5 mm 5 mm.

2.3 Transmitter
The data bit-stream from the digital platform is fed into a Frequency Shift Keying (FSK) trans-
mitter. FSK is chosen for its better noise immunity than other modulation methods such as
Amplitude Shift Keying (ASK). The transmitter is designed out of ultra-miniaturised discrete
components, yielding a 5 mm 8 mm 11 mm package. The transmitter design is made as
small and low power as possible, yet provides a sufficiently clear signal to the receiver. An
example scenario will be a pill transmitting signal from the GI tract to an external receiver that
is located next to the body.
3 EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

(a) Temperature sensor (b) Dissolved oxygen sensor

(c) Conductivity sensor (d) pH sensor

Figure 4: Graphs of the output signal functions over the four different sensor dynamic ranges.
(a) Temperature sensor has a linear response within a dynamic range of 0 - 70 C with a sens-
itivity of 31.5 mV/ C. (b) Dissolved oxygen sensor shows a linear response within a dynamic
range of 0 - 8.2 mgL with a sensitivity of 0.12 mg O
/nA. (c) Conductivity sensor demon-

strates a logarithmic response over a range of 0.05 - 10 mScm . (d) pH sensor is responding

linearly over a dynamic range of pH 4 - 10 with a sensitivity of -23.5 mV/pH.

The ASIC and the sensor chips have been successfully tested on a laboratory testbench. The in
vitro test results are plotted at Figure 4 and are summarised in Table 1. The ASIC is powered
by two SR44 Ag
O batteries and the voltages are specified at 0 and 1.5V. With reference to


Table 2, the battery can last for more than 76 hours of continuous operation. The first prototype
weights 13.5g and measures 16 mm 55 mm.

As depicted in Figure 5, the start- and end-tags for the output bit-stream have been detected.
Additionally, since the test environment is quiescent, there is no signal after the three initial
transmission. Hence, the digital logic included the DSP algorithm is operating as intended.

For this prototype, a scanning receiver (WiNRADiO WR-3150e) is used to pick up the RF sig-
nal from the transmitter at 38.342 MHz. The receiver’s output is then fed into a data aquisition
card (National Instruments DAQPad-6020E) before being stored in the memory of a PC. From
experiment, the transmitter has a 1 m of coverage range and the received signal has a 78 dB of
SNR.
 Figure 5: Transmitter control from the digital platform.

Sensor Dynamic Range Cross Correlation Resolution

Temperature 0 - 70 C 0.829 0.4 C
Conductivity 0.05 - 10 mScm 0.995 0.02 mScm

pH pH 4 - 10 0.993 0.64 pH unit

Dissolved oxygen 0 - 8.2 mgL 0.950 0.08 mgL

Table 1: Summary of the sensors’ properties in corresponding channels. The resolution is de-
rived based on eight usable bits out of the possible 10-bit provided by ADC.

Component Current (mA) Power (mW)

Analogue (excluded ADC) 0.9 2.7
Digital (including ADC) 0.2 0.6
Transmitter 1.0 3.0
Total 2.1 6.3

Table 2: Summary of the power consumption for the entire microsystem with a nominal oper-
ating voltage supply of 3 V. The transmitter has a duty cycle of 15 %.

4 SUMMARY
We have designed and implemented a multisensor microsystem that works well. The design
takes the advantages of both the LOC technology and the SoC methodology. Future work
includes further miniaturisation, greater sensor diversity, intelligent sensor fusion and dynamic
reconfigurability.

5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to acknowledge financial support from the Scottish Higher Education
Funding Council (RDG 130).
Figure 6: The first prototype of Lab-in-a-Pill with its rear cap opened for an inner view of the
microsystem. The microsystem consists of sensors, control chip, RF transmitter and batteries.

References
[1] Pai, R., Roussel, T., Crain, M., Jackson, D., Conklin, J., Baldwin, R., Keynton, R., Naber,
J., Walsh, K., “Integrated Electrochemical Detection for Lab on a Chip Analytical Mi-
crosystems”, Proceedings of the 14th Biennial University/Government/Industry Micro
Electronics Symposium, 2001: p. 167-170.

[2] Aguilo, J., Millan, J., Villa, R., “Micro and nano technologies in medical applications:
a challenge”, Invited Paper, Proceedings of the International Semiconductor Conference,
vol. 1, 2001: p. 247-255.

[3] Mason, A., Yazdi, N., Chavan, A. V., Najafi, K., Wise, K. D., “A Generic Multielement
Microsystem for Portable Wireless Applications”, Invited Paper, Proceedings of the IEEE,
86 (8), 1998: p. 1733-1746.

[4] Kundert, K., Chang, H., Jefferies, D., Lamant, G., Malavasi, E., Sendig, F., “Design
of mixed-signal systems-on-a-chip”, IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of
Integrated Circuits and Systems, 19 (12), 2000: p. 1561-1571.

[5] Bourgeois, W., Burgess, J. E., Stuetz, R. M., “On-line monitoring of wastewater quality:
a review”, Journal of Chemical Technology and Biotechnology, 76 (4), 2001: p. 337-348.

[6] Lei Wang, et al., “Integrated micro-instrumentation for dynamic gastro-intestinal tract
monitoring”, Proceedings of the IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Technology
Conference, 2002: p. 1717-1720.