Healthcare Wireless and Device Connectivity

Introduction of Nordic Bluetooth 5 SOC (System on a Chip) and Q4 2016 Newsletter by Nordic Semiconductor

Nordic www.nordic.semi.com continues to push the envelope.

Integra Systems has used Nordic products on several projects. Nordic Semi is a great company and provides great support.

Wireless overtakes wired headphones

Bluetooth headphones outsold wired headphones for the first time ever in the first half of 2016 according to consumer research firm NPD Group.

Bluetooth 5 provides major advances in speed, security, and meshing capabilities.

See the following specifications of the Nordic 5 SOC.

Advanced multi-protocol SoC supporting
Bluetooth 5/ANT/ 802.15.4/ 2.4GHz
Proprietary

Active
The nRF52840 SoC is an advanced, highly flexible ultra-low power multiprotocol SoC ideally suited for ultra low-power
wireless applications. The nRF52840 SoC is built around a 32-bit ARM® Cortex™-M4F CPU with 1MB flash and 256kB
RAM on chip. The embedded 2.4GHz transceiver supports Bluetooth® low energy (Bluetooth 5), 802.15.4, ANT and
proprietary 2.4GHz protocols. It is on air compatible with existing nRF52 Series, nRF51 Series, and nRF24 Series products from Nordic Semiconductor

Bluetooth 5
The nRF52840 has hardware support on-chip for Bluetooth 5. This includes long range and high throughput capability. It supports all Bluetooth low energy physical layer bit rates and modulation schemes.

Processing Power
The nRF52840 incorporates a powerful Cortex-M4F processor running at 64 MHz enabling the most demanding applications with complex arithmetic requirements to
be realized in a single chip solution. This CPU configuration supports DSP instructions, HW accelerated Floating Point Unit (FPU) calculations,single-cycle
multiply and accumulate, and hardware divide for energy-efficient processing complex operations.

Multiprotocol Radio
The 2.4GHz radio supports multiple protocols including Bluetooth low energy, ANT, 802.15.4 and 2.4GHz proprietary. It supports Bluetooth low energy 2Mbs and
1Mbs and Bluetooth 5 long range (500kbs and 125kbs). The radio supports high resolution RSSI measurement and automated functions to reduce
CPU load, including EasyDMA for direct memory access for packet data and assembly. Nordic provides protocol stacks for Bluetooth low energy. ANT protocol stacks are available from ANT.

Memory to Expand
The nRF52840 has extensive on-chip memory in both flash (1MB) and RAM (256kB) offering powerful possibilities for today’s advanced wireless applications.

Power Efficiency
The nRF52840 SoC employs power and resource management to maximize application energy efficiency and battery life. The supply range between 1.7V and 5.5V
supports primary and secondary cell battery technologies and direct USB supply without the need for external regulators. All peripherals have independent and
automated clock and power management to ensure they are powered down when not required for task operation to keep power consumption to a minimum without the
application having to implement and test complex power management schemes.The nRF52840 has a comprehensive system of automated and adaptive power
management features. These features are built into all aspects of device operation from power supply switching, to peripheral bus/EasyDMA memory
management and a automated shut down of all but the absolute essential peripherals required to perform a task.

ARM® TrustZone® Cryptocell-310
ARM Cryptocell-310 is a powerful on-chip cryptographic co-processor providing cryptographic functions and services to speed
up operations significantly, save CPU processing time and reduce energy consumption. It incorporates a true random number generator (TRNG) and support for a wide range of asymmetric, symmetric and hashing cryptographic services for secure applications.

On-chip NFC tag
NFC™-A tag support is included on chip. NFC Type 2 and Type 4 tag emulation protocol stacks are provided by Nordic opening up a range of new applications,
like NFC payment, and improved user experience for existing BLE applications with Out-of-Band (OOB) pairing. OOB pairing using NFC simplifies the process of
authenticated pairing between two Bluetooth devices by exchanging authentication information over an NFC link.

USB 2.0
The nRF52840 has on-chip USB 2.0 (Full speed) support and on-chip VBUS regulation allowing for direct connection to USB hosts for data transfer and direct USB
power for hosted applications.

Package Options
The nRF52840 is available in 7x7mm 73pin AQFN package with 48 available GPIO.

SoftDevice
The Nordic protocol stacks are known as SoftDevices. The nRF52840 is supported by the S140 SoftDevice. The S140 SoftDevice is a Bluetooth 5 pre-qualified
Bluetooth low energy protocol stack.

Download NS_ULP_WQ_Q416_Winter

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Cybersecurity and Medical Devices

As one who has been in the medical device industry for over thirty years, I have seen the evolution from stand alone medical devices and closed proprietary patient monitoring systems to the truly connected medical device. Integra Systems, Inc., started in 1997 and we have worked with companies pre ratification of IEEE 802.11b (Direct Sequence Spread SpreadSpectrum) in 1999 until present 2016. In that time we have seen the evolution of network security best practice and also the changes as part of IEEE 802.11 and security.

Proper security on any networked device, whether a wireless connected medical device or laptop, consists of the design of the network and the back end systems. Segmentation by VLAN and ESSIDs by the application makes sense from a pure networking standpoint, also one has to look ensure the proper signal strength and coverage for the intended application. Often overlooked is the utilization of WLAN Intrusion Detection Systems or IDS. IDS is the next layer to wireless cybersecurity mitigation. Any IDS should provide a complete solution set that secures both the wireless network and the mobile enterprise and the actual users. Any IDS should monitor the system 24x7, which should allow for the identification of network attacks and instantly terminate the connection to a rogue device. There also should be an extensive event library with context-aware detection engines that detect only meaningful security events. A comparison should be made of existing and day-zero threats in real time, which is then compared to the gathered historical data. The result of this real-time comparison is the ability to accurately detect all wireless attacks and anomalous behavior.

Finally, the majority if not all wireless medical device manufactures now have to conduct validation and verification and wireless co-existence testing for a FDA 510(k) submittal. Companies often test and validate with the market leaders in the WLAN space and use www.ixiacom.com considered to be the gold standard for ecosystem testing. Integra Systems, Inc, has worked with many wireless medical device companies to conduct this testing.

However, the enterprise WLAN infrastructure providers of controllers (including virtualized and WLAN access points) continue to update the firmware and software. The changes in this technology, evolve many times faster than the changes in the medical device space. To keep up with the challenges of security, the enterprise companies evolve along with IEEE 802. 11 standards. It is recommended that validation and verification testing for security and quality of service be continuous for the wireless-enabled medical device. This will ensure that the wireless enabled medical device is kept current with the changes in the enterprise that are addressing the changing security requirements.

Download Airdefense-services-platform-data-sheet

Download 915-8108-01-S-WP-The Model for Deploying and Integrating Network Security and Monitoring Tools_0

Download 915-2765-01-M-SB-ConnectedHealthcare

Download 915-2760-01-Rev-A-S-WP-Security Reliability of Mobile Healthcare

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Integra Systems Wireless Forensic Engineering

Near Field Magnetics

Over the past sixteen years we have worked with and understood virtually every type of technology used for real time location systems. This is included but not limited to Wi-Fi, UWB (Ultrawide Band), Zigbee, Ultrasound, proprietary RF, and BTLE. All with the exception of Ultrasound have relied upon RF. Of all mentioned, we feel that BTLE offers the most potential for RTLS. In everyday use wireless communication does have it’s limitations. It is because wireless consists of propagating radio waves. We all know about using our smart phone….”can you hear me now”? The coating on commercial windows tends to keep the cellular signal from penetrating inside the building. Wi-Fi has issues around glass, metal, and water. There are a number of different factors which can affect a wireless signal however the most important is reflectivity.

Reflectivity - This is when a signal hits an object and is reflected off at an angle (which depends on the angle it hits the object at). When a radio frequency (RF) signal is transmitted towards the receiver, the general behavior of the RF signal is to grow wider as it is transmitted further. On its way, the RF signal encounters objects that reflect, refract, diffract or interfere with the signal. An amount of the energy is absorbed in the process. A possible outcome of reflection is multipath where several different signals reach the receiver each taking a different path, often arriving later, out of phase of the main stream.

Multipath delay causes the information symbols represented in 802.11 signals to overlap, which confuses the receiver. If the delays are great enough, bit errors in the packet occur. Diversity is the use of two antennas for each radio, to increase the odds that you receive a better signal on either of the antennas in the case of experiencing a null. The antennas used to provide a diversity solution can be in the same physical housing or must be two separate but equal antennas in the same location. (That is why you have two antennas on a WLAN Access Point!)

We feel that NFMI (Near Field Magnetics) offers the potential of providing precise location based knowledge in very harsh RF environments.

The basic premise behind the technology is that there is no propagating wave, just a magnetic field. (Think of mutual coupling in a transformer). The basic technology is running a modulated current through a coil to generate a time varying magnetic field (Ampere’s Law). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampère's_circuital_law
This time varying magnetic field will produce a voltage in a coil, (Faraday’s Law). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday's_law_of_induction
Modulation can be ASK, PSK, FSK, QAM or any other scheme.

Integra Systems, Inc., is working with http://nearfieldmagnetics.com to explore the commercial use of this technology and applications specific to the healthcare industry as well as other vertical markets.

The Convergence of Personal Healthcare Data with the EHR

Integra Systems, Inc. has had discussions with this innovative company over the past two years.
www.vivalink.com

We were introduced to them. Over the past two years several products have been introduced to the market that are quite innovative, FeverScout and VitalScout. It is felt that the personal healthcare ecosystem is going through a lot of change. Individuals are taking more ownership of their data and as a result are being proactive for their own healthcare. This is all very good. Rapid advances in BTLE and silicon have made this type of technology just happen. When you converge this with the smart phone and the cloud, huge change opportunities become present. It would be great if this data could perhaps be merged with an individuals EHR. For example, if you had your last 12 lead EKG completed and you had a normal sinus rhythm, how would this data impact the potential decrease of medication for high blood pressure? This would provide probably a better real time picture. Some may argue that this not true diagnostic data, but understand nothing like this existed before. It may take some time, but from a data analytics stand point, it makes a lot of sense it seems. The convergence of the data is going to happen.

Application Analytics for Healthcare Wired and Wireless Network Visibility

Why the Need of Analytics for Network Visibility?

Application Analytics allows IT operations to optimize the network for each and every application, enhance security for those applications and provide data for business analytics.

This empowers IT to turn the network into a strategic business asset that can now provide value to other lines of business, and it enables business innovation powered by the network infrastructure.

Application Analytics intelligence provides IT with the visibility and control of applications and websites (including related sub-web sites) resident in all parts of the network, from the wired or wireless edge all the way through the core and datacenter, as well as application traffic from the Enterprise to the private Cloud, public Cloud or any service on the internet.

Download ExtremeAnalytics-DS

Download ExtremeAnalytics-for-Healthcare-DS