TI adds on-chip respiration measurement to ECG/EEG analog front end family to simplify design of portable patient monitoring systems

DALLAS, USA: Building on its award-winning ADS1298 analog-front-end (AFE) family, Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) (NYSE: TXN) today introduced the industry's first fully-integrated AFEs with on-chip respiration impedance measurement in full production.

The 24-bit ADS1298R devices simplify the implementation of respiration detection in portable electrocardiogram (ECG) equipment by integrating more than 40 discrete components, reducing component count as much as 97 percent. They are also extremely power efficient, using up to 95 percent less power than discrete implementations. ADS1298R devices are available in eight-, six-, and four-channel versions.

Key features and benefits
* Provides respiration impedance at a resolution of 20 milliohms, enabling the accurate monitoring and correlation of patient respiration to ECG abnormalities.
* Integrates 44 discrete components, reducing board space up to 97 percent. In addition to a fully-integrated respiration impedance function with user-selectable phase adjustment, ADS1298R devices include eight analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), eight programmable gain amplifiers (PGAs), eight active filters and pace detect interface, lead off detection, voltage reference, right leg drive (RLD) and more.
* Uses only 750 uW/channel, up to 95 percent lower power consumption than discrete implementations, with multiple power-down configurations to increase the battery life of portable patient monitoring devices.
* Typical 4-uVpp input-referred noise surpasses the International Electrotechnical Commission's IEC60601-2-27/51 standard, enabling extremely high levels of accuracy in portable and high-channel-density ECG equipment.
* Complementing the leading power consumption of the ADS1298R is the TMS320C5515 ultra-low-power DSP, which uses less than 0.15 mW/MHz to further extend battery life.