Healthcare Wireless and Device Connectivity

The Design of Medical Electronic Solutions for Unique Environments

One of the challenges of designing embedded solutions is to understand the environment that they will be used in. In this case Integra Systems was challenged to come up with a solution for embedded electronics that will withstand sterilization in an autoclave. This means that the electronics will have to go undergo steam sterilization at temperatures over 130 degrees centigrade (266 F) without damage to the electronic performance life. We teamed up with SCHOTT to come up with several options and had the opportunity to visit their R&D facility in Germany last year.

SCHOTT is a leading international technology group in the areas of specialty glass and glass-ceramics. The company has more than 130 years of outstanding development, materials and technology expertise and offers a broad portfolio of high-quality products and intelligent solutions. SCHOTT is an innovative enabler for many industries, including the home appliance, pharmaceutical, electronics, optics, life sciences, automotive and aviation industries. SCHOTT strives to play an important part of everyone’s life and is committed to innovation and sustainable success. The parent company, SCHOTT AG, has its headquarters in Mainz (Germany) and is solely owned by the Carl Zeiss Foundation. As a foundation company, SCHOTT assumes special responsibility for its employees, society and the environment.

SCHOTT provides hermetically sealing housings and feedthroughs to reliably encapsulate electronic components. These housing types range from Transitor Outlines (TOs) and Microelectronic housings with gas-tight Glass to Metal Sealing (GTMS) and Ceramic-to-Metal (CerTMS® ) housings as well as full ceramic housings as well as full ceramic packages. Inorganic materials are used to manufacture these hermetic housing. The laser welding of metal and glass or ceramics consistently prevents moisture from seeping into the housing. These vacuum tight housings and feedthroughs can withstand high temperatures, thermal shock, pressure, moisture, chemicals and mechanical impact making them fully autoclavable.

In addition to housings, SCHOTT also provides a line of sterilizable LEDS, of which includes the world’s smallest autoclavable HB (high brightness) LED and the first ring-shaped HB LED. In 3,500 test cycles at an ambient pressure of 2 bar and at a temperature of 134 Centigrade, these LED modules have proven to remain absolutely gas tight while retaining outstanding optical performance.

Download Schott-autoclavable-housings-for-the-reliable-encapsulation-of_medical-electronics-2015-eng

Download Schott-solidur-leds-autoclavable-sterilizable-custom-designed-medical-dental_eng

Bluetooth 5 from Nordic and Security

Nordic is the leader in BTLE and most recently with the nRF52 series and the introduction of BTLE 5

Security is "baked in" to Nordic Solutions and is enhanced with capabilities such as:

- Read/Write protection in flash on silicon
- Firmware is securely in internal flash
- Hardware accelerators - AES ECB CCM
- SoftDevices support BT 4.2 security
OOB (NRF52 NFC on silicon)
Passkey entry
LE secure connections
- nRF52840 - ARM (R) CyptoCell

https://developer.arm.com/products/system-ip/trustzone-security-ip

Ultra Lower Power Wireless Quarterly Application Opportunities The PAN Crossing the WLAN and WAN

Integra Systems, Inc. www.integrasystems.org over the past twenty years has provided the connectivity knowledge and technical expertise to many companies in multiple vertical markets on a global basis based upon our decades combined of the end point device and the wireless domain knowledge experience.

Our work has extended to working with Nordic on several projects and we consider them the de-facto standard in BTLE SoC, ANT, and Thread.

While this issue of the ULP (Quarter/Spring 2018) is very interesting from the BTLE application perspective; the convergence of cellular into the IOT space with BTLE and WLAN will drive a major cross the chasm business opportunity.

Download ULP_WQ_Spring_2018