Breathing rate monitoring is a must for hospitalized patients with the current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). We review in this paper recent implementations of breathing monitoring techniques, where both contact and remote approaches are presented. It is known that with non-contact monitoring, the patient is not tied to an instrument, which improves patients’ comfort and enhances the accuracy of extracted breathing activity, since the distress generated by a contact device is avoided. Remote breathing monitoring allows screening people infected with COVID-19 by detecting abnormal respiratory patterns. However, non-contact methods show some disadvantages such as the higher set-up complexity compared to contact ones. On the other hand, many reported contact methods are mainly implemented using discrete components. While, numerous integrated solutions have been reported for non-contact techniques, such as continuous wave (CW) Doppler radar and ultrawideband (UWB) pulsed radar. These radar chips are discussed and their measured performances are summarized and compared.

This paper presents a wireless power and downlink data transfer system for medical implants operating over a single 10 MHz inductive link. The system is based on a Carrier Width Modulation (CWM) scheme for high-speed communication and efficient power delivery using a novel modulator circuit design. Unlike conventional modulation techniques, the data rate of the proposed CWM is not limited by the quality factors of the primary and secondary coils. The functionality of the new modulation method is proven using a hybrid implementation comprising a custom-integrated demodulator circuit and board-level discrete components. The proposed Wireless Power and Data Transfer (WPDT) system is also capable of operating under a wide range of data rates. It allows a maximum data rate of 3.33 Mb/s for a maximum power delivery of 6.1 mW at 1 cm coils separation distance. The system can recover more power, reaching 55 mW at 100 kb/s. Due to the system genericity, an operator can select the best compromise between power and data rates in accordance to application or current need, without reconfiguring the receiver. Another advantage of this modulation technique is the simple implementation and the ultra-low power consumption of the CWM demodulator despite its high-speed demodulation.

A fully-integrated data transmission system based on gallium nitride (GaN) high-electron-mobility transistor (HEMT) devices is proposed. This system targets high-temperature (HT) applications, especially those involving pressure and temperature sensors for aerospace in which the environmental temperature exceeds 350 °C. The presented system includes a front-end amplifying the sensed signal (gain of 50 V/V), followed by a novel analog-to-digital converter driving a modulator exploiting the load-shift keying technique. An oscillation frequency of 1.5 MHz is used to ensure a robust wireless transmission through metallic-based barriers. To retrieve the data, a new demodulator architecture based on digital circuits is proposed. A 1 V amplitude difference can be detected between a high-amplitude (data-on) and a low-amplitude (data-off) of the received modulated signal. Two high-voltage supply levels (+14 V and −14 V) are required to operate the circuits. The layout of the proposed system was completed in a chip occupying 10.8 mm². The HT characterization and modeling of integrated GaN devices and passive components are performed to ensure the reliability of simulation results. The performance of the various proposed building blocks, as well as the whole system, have been validated by simulation over the projected wide operating temperature range (25–350 °C).

This paper introduces a fully integrated frequency-modulated ultra-wideband (UWB) transmitter implemented in 130 nm CMOS technology. The 3.5-4 GHz band transmitter involves a phase-locked loop (PLL)-based binary frequency-shift keying subcarrier generator to provide the modulated triangular waveform. The RF signal is generated using a voltage-controlled oscillator and modulated by the triangular signal resulting in a constant-envelope UWB signal. A PLL-based RF calibration scheme is employed to calibrate the lower and the upper frequencies of the modulated RF signal. The purpose of this novel calibration structure is to keep transmitting in a fixed emission band. A Class-AB power amplifier is utilized to amplify the modulated RF signal and drive the antenna through an integrated matching network. The transmitter occupies 0.124 mm² silicon area and consumes 987 μW from a 1.2 V supply. It achieves an energy consumption of 0.987 nJ/bit at 1 Mbps data rate.

This paper proposes a real-time thermal monitoring method using embedded integrated sensor interfaces dedicated to industrial integrated system applications. Industrial sensor interfaces are complex systems that involve analog and mixed signals, where several parameters can influence their performance. These include the presence of heat sources near sensitive integrated circuits, and various heat transfer phenomena need to be considered. This creates a need for real-time thermal monitoring and management. Indeed, the control of transient temperature gradients or temperature differential variations as well as the prediction of possible induced thermal shocks and stress at early design phases of advanced integrated circuits and systems are essential. This paper addresses the growing requirements of microelectronics applications in several areas that experience fast variations in high-power density and thermal gradient differences caused by the implementation of different systems on the same chip, such as the new-generation 5G circuits. To mitigate adverse thermal effects, a real-time prediction algorithm is proposed and validated using the MCUXpresso tool applied to a Freescale embedded sensor board to monitor and predict its temperature profile in real time by programming the embedded sensor into the FRDM-KL26Z board. Based on discrete temperature measurements, the embedded system is used to predict, in advance, overheating situations in the embedded integrated circuit (IC). These results confirm the peak detection capability of the proposed algorithm that satisfactorily predicts thermal peaks in the FRDM-KL26Z board as modeled with a finite element thermal analysis tool (the Numerical Integrated elements for System Analysis (NISA) tool), to gauge the level of local thermomechanical stresses that may be induced. In this paper, the FPGA implementation and comparison measurements are also presented. This work provides a solution to the thermal stresses and local system overheating that have been a major concern for integrated sensor interface designers when designing integrated circuits in various high-performance technologies or harsh environments.

We present in this paper design considerations and implementation challenges of a proposed versatile SoC/SiP sensor interface intended for industrial applications. The proposed interface involves high-voltage circuits such as class-D power amplifiers, gate drivers, level shifters, and electrical isolators. Also, it includes low-voltage blocks like programmable gain amplifiers and ADCs. In addition, DC-to-DC converters are used to supply the various building blocks of the projected sensor interface. The key challenges for implementing each block are discussed in this paper. Also, the technological aspects to support the proposed SoC/SiP solution are given. Moreover, the different available packaging technologies to implement the intended SiP solution are discussed in addition to the thermal aspects associated with the system packaging.