Power management is a key need for the development of portable medical devices. The ADS1293 analog front end (AFE) is a power efficient 24-bit, 3 channel unit for biopotential measurement applications, such as portable, battery-powered electrocardiograms (ECG), Holter monitors, and wireless patient monitoring equipment. It is part of the ADS1298 AFE family, and can support one to five leads to reduce the size, power consumption, and overall cost of scalable medical instrumentation systems. Each channel of the AFE can be independently programmed for a specific sample rate and bandwidth to optimize the configuration for performance and power.

The WEBENCH Medical AFE Designer simplifies and speeds system design with the AFE, enabling you to design and configure the AFE online. You can then download configuration data to the unit’s evaluation module (EVM), reducing design time from weeks or months to minutes.

Key features and benefits include:

• Low power-consumption to extend battery life: consumes only 300 uW per channel, 85% less than alternative integrated solutions.
• Includes simultaneous digital ECG and pace signals on each channel; which eliminates the need for a dedicated pace channel, reducing power consumption.
• Includes built-in error detection with an alarm pin, relieving the controller from continuously polling for error conditions.
• Allows independent shutdown on any functional blocks that are not in use.
• Highly integrated to simplify design, reduce board space: Optimizes signal path gain stages, which eliminates the need for analog filters and reduces board space requirements, by integrating three 24-bit delta sigma analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), four low-noise instrumentation amplifiers and EMI-hardened inputs, right leg drive amplifier, lead-off detection, and Wilson and Goldberger terminals.
• System design flexibility: Programmable settings for dc and ac lead-off detection to increase design flexibility.

Texas Instruments
www.ti.com