2015 IEEE International Conference on Consumer Electronics (ICCE)
A Real-time Monitoring System Controller for
Medical Tissue Engineering Bioreactors
c. Leibold 1, M. Wahalla 1, C. Blume2, H. Blume 1
I Institute of Microelectronic Systems
2Institute of Technical Chemistry
Leibniz Universitat Hannover, Germany
{leibold, wahalla, blume}@{lims, 2itfc}.uni-hannover.de
Ahstract- This paper presents and evaluates a controller for
Medical Smart Implants to provide real-time monitoring in biore­
actors. The controller is based on a Cortex M3 microcontroller
with an integrated IEEE 802.15.4 compliant RF transceiver
hardware module in a single System-on-Chip. The modular
concept is easily adjusted to react to differing conditions. Energy
consumption and experiment results, under real circumstances,
are provided.
Index Terms-Smart Implants; Bioreactor; System-on-Chip;
Wireless;
I. INT RODUCTION
BIOFABRICATION [1] is a research consortium, located
in Hannover, Germany, that focuses on the science and devel­
opment of Medical Smart Implants and Tissue Engineering.
Medical Smart Implants are used to monitor various values
from medical containments (e.g. bioreactors) or from patients
directly, process measured data and transmit it to an external
device from where the data can be handled as necessary.
Bioreactors are the key to growing biological substitutes
outside of a living being [2]. A bioreactor is hermetically
sealed and should remain steril and unopened during the
whole growth process, this can last up to several weeks. In
addition, bioreactors offer limited space to fit in electronics and
dependent on usage, the various chemicals and physical values
needing to be measured. According to these properties the
following conditions are necessary for Medical Smart Implants
to be used in bioreactors:
1) Long runtime (weeks), low-power consumption
2) Small amount of available area
3) Integrated sensors for measurements
4) Wireless data transmission (Less than 1 % package loss)
5) Flexible adaptation to requirements
6) Sterility and chemical stability
The paper is organized as follows: The concept of a real­
time monitoring system is given in Section II. Section III
presents the design of a controller with wireless transceiver
to fit in the presented concept. The system is evaluated in
Section IV and Section V provides a conclusion.
II. CONCEPT OF A REAL-TIME MONITORING S YSTEM
The concept is based on the principle of divide and conquer.
The Smart Implant is split into four modules (Fig. 1). These
978-1-4799-7543-3/15/$31.00 ©2015 IEEE
M. Wilhelmi
Department of Cardiothoracic, Transplantation and
Vascular Surgery
Hannover Medical School, Germany
wilhelmi. mathias@mh-hannover.de
- Values measurement
Sensors
- Voltage amplification
- Sensor controlling
- Data processing & transfer
- Long term power supply
- Voltage transformation
Fig. l. Modular concept of a Real-time Monitoring System
modules (Sensors, Controller, Wireless transceiver and Power
Supply) can be selected and adjusted based on the conditions.
The sensors used can adapt to measure any kind of value.
In bioreactors common values measured are temperature, pH­
value and blood gases. Gyroscopes are also used to verify that
a bioreactor never dropped or tamered with during the growth
process, as this could damaged the implant.
To control sensors and process the measured values a pro­
grammable microprocessor can be used. The signal processing
can contain complex mathematical functions and algorithms
like filters or classification operations. To fulfill the real-time
condition, this usually requires a more powerful microproces­
sor to account for bit width and clock speed.
The controller has access to a wireless transceiver which
exchanges data and information with an external host-device.
The focus here lies on low energy consumption and not on
speed, possibly leading to communication standards IEEE
802.15.1 (Bluetooth) or IEEE 802.15.4 (ZigBee).
It is most important to guarantee a constant power supply
during the whole growth process. Possibilities for a power sup­
ply are batteries, energy harvesting or wirelessly per magnetic
induction.
III. CONTROLLER AND WIRELESS TRAN SCEIVER DESIGN
Fig. 2 shows the top and bottom sides of the designed
controller for a Medical Smart Implant with a total area of
261 mm2. The printed circuit board (PCB) has a thickness of
0.9 mm and consists of 4 routing layers.
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 2015 IEEE International Conference on Consumer Electronics (ICCE)

Antenna-' 120

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= 80
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E To Power Supply-'
C. 60
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=
= 40

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Idle OSC ZB TX ZB TX ZB TX LED
Fig. 2. Top (left) and bottom (right) side of the controller PCB 16MHz 32 MHz 1 5 dBm
- -3 dBm +7 dBm
• Idle .OSC .ZB TX .LED

The System-on-Chip (SoC) CC2538 by Texas Instruments Fig. 3. General power consumption of the controller
has been chosen as microprocessor. It includes a 32-bit ARM
Cortex M3 microcontroller and a dedicated 2.4 GHz IEEE TABLE I
802.15.4 compliant RF transceiver hardware module, this AVERAGE PACKAGE LOSS DEPENDENT ON THE DISTANCE

allows the unification of the controller and wireless transceiver

module of Fig. 1. In addition, the SoC is designed for low
power consumption. To connect external devices 32 General­
Purpose 110 (GPIO) pins are configurable as digital in- or
output, analog input or in combination as a serial protocol
(SPI, UART, 12C). The analog converter has a resolution of 12
bits and can convert voltages from 0 V to the Supply Voltage
(2 V to 3.6 V ). An operating temperature up to 125°C allows
heat serilization by autoclave.
A 2.4 GHz SMD on-ground antenna is used. The antenna is
perpendicular to the PCB; no removal of ground layers beneath
the antenna is needed. The antenna determines the maximum
height of 4 mm.
As additional components, an external 32 MHz oscillator
(OSC) is necessary to provide an accurate clock signal for the
SoC and the wireless data transmission. A user defined LED
has been installed to display feedback signals.
Sensors and power supply can be connected via 0.5 mm
Pitch SMD Board to Board Connectors. Several GPIO pins
including all analog input pins are routed to the sensors
connector. The connector to the power supply contains the
necessary pins to program the SoC with a self-programmed
Distance
Package loss
chosen transmit power. In comparison the power consumption
for the LED with around 20 m W is shown.
To verify the functionality experimentally for a bioreactor a
test under real circumstances has been accomplished. For this,
a temperature sensor has been attached to the controller and
the whole system was powered by a wireless power transfer
module. The system was encapsulated to be waterproof and
mounted in a test bioreactor, which was filled with tap water.
The controller was programmed to transmit measured tem­
perature values to a Host-PC outside of the bioreactor 10,000
times. In all directions, the ZigBee-signals had to pass through
at least 7 cm of water. Tab. I shows the package loss rate.
The package loss of less than 1 % at a distance of 1 m,
shows, that the controller with integrated ZigBee-Interface
can transmit data out of a bioreactor and can be powered
wirelessl y.
V. CONCLUSION

firmware in ANSI C. For this, a separate programming exten­
sion board has been developed to connect the controller and
power supply.
The programming extension board has a JTAG interface to
program and debug firmware and a Serial-to-USB converter
(F T 320XS). This allows data to be exchanged easily with a
common Host-PC and to power the controller if no power
supply is connected. As programming device the XDS100v3
USB CJTAG/JTAG Emulator can be used, which is compatible
to the development environment Code Composer Studio (CCS)
IDE version v5.
IV. EVALUATION
To evaluate the energy consumption of the designed con­
troller a constant supply voltage of 3. 3 V has been chosen and
Medical Smart Implants are used to provide real-time mon­
itoring of bioreactors, which are vital in medical tissue engi­
neering. The presented concept for such implants allows flexi­
ble adjustment to different situations. The designed controller
includes a 32-bit Cortex M3 microcontroller and a dedicated
IEEE 802.15.4 transceiver hardware module combined in a
single System-on-Chip. The power consumption of permanent
data transmission is approximately over 100 m W. In a test
under real circumstances, the controller could transmit data
over a distance of 1 m out of a bioreactor filled with water with
an average package loss of 0.34 %. The controllers compact
size of 261 mm2 lends itself perfectly to use in other related
telemedical applications e.g. Body Sensor Networks.
REFERENCES

the current has been measured (Fig. 3).
The 32 MHz oscillator consumes 12 mW in addition to
the idle SoC at 16 MHz. The energy consumption needed to
transmit data over ZigBee (ZB) is almost independent from the
[1] BIOFABRICATION, [ONLINE]. Available: www.biofabrication.info
[2] I. Martin, D. Wendt, and M. Heberer, "The role of bioreactors in
tissue engineering", Trends in Biotechnology, vol. 22, No. 2, pp. 80-86,
February 2004.

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