Infineon Technologies' three sensor innovations accelerate the digital revolution in the healthcare industry

The COVID-19 pandemic in recent years and the deepening aging of society have made the concept of health care increasingly popular.

Deloitte's "2021 Global Healthcare Outlook: Accelerating Industry Change" report points out that new digital tools can play an important role in future healthcare, from monitoring personal health and helping individuals get more convenient health care, to giving caregivers peace of mind and helping the elderly stay at home instead of moving to nursing homes.

The "14th Five-Year Plan for Healthy Aging" jointly issued by the National Health Commission and other 15 departments also mentioned the development of technologies and products related to monitoring and intervention in elderly neurology, sleep, etc., and the development of elderly health promotion assessment, diagnosis, and monitoring technologies and products suitable for home and community use.

Li Guohao, Application Marketing Director of Power and Sensor Systems Division of Infineon Technologies Greater China, cited ABI's market research report and pointed out that in the next 8 to 10 years, the market demand for installing Home Healthcare (health management in home scenarios) products will grow rapidly, from 20 million units in 2022 to more than 180 million units in 2030. "This reflects the increase in people's attention to health conditions, and now through advanced sensor technology, vital signs data can be collected and converted into results that ordinary people can understand." Li Guohao said.

As Li Guohao said, for health care equipment, sensors are an important way to obtain human body information; high-performance, low-power, small-size, and low-priced products can make the equipment more practical. At the same time, the emergence of more innovative sensors can enable the equipment to achieve more functions, thereby accelerating the birth of health products.

In order to make home health monitoring devices more effective and safer while simplifying their operation, Infineon Technologies, one of the major suppliers of sensors, is accelerating the expansion of sensors in the health monitoring and healthcare market through many innovations.

Li Guohao said: "In the past, there were many professional sensors in the field of medical and health monitoring. Due to the advantages of Infineon sensors in packaging, size, cost and technology, their industrial applications can be expanded to consumer electronic products to meet the needs of healthcare applications."

Black technology introduced from automobiles - millimeter wave radar

Radar technology, which was born in the 1940s, has been widely used in aviation, ships, military and other fields. Its principle is very simple, which is to send out radar waves, receive return waves, and calculate the shape and movement of objects in front.

With the development of intelligent vehicles, radar technology has made great progress in the fields of ADAS and unmanned driving, evolving from 24GHz ultrasonic radar to single-chip 77GHz millimeter-wave radar based on Si CMOS technology. At the same time, many millimeter-wave radar manufacturers have also launched 60GHz frequency band chips for applications in industrial, consumer and medical markets. Wu Boyi, senior marketing manager of the Power and Sensor Systems Division of Infineon Technologies Greater China, said that the wavelength of 60GHz millimeter-wave radar is relatively short, which can detect tiny movements of the human body and is also easier to perform signal analysis.

Wu Boyi introduced the advantages of millimeter wave radar. The first is that its high resolution can even detect the chest rise and fall of human breathing or heartbeat, thereby realizing vital signs monitoring. The second is that its high-speed characteristics can accurately determine the distance, position, speed, angle and other information of objects, thereby realizing motion tracking. The third is that it can penetrate any non-conductive material, making it easier to realize system installation and integration without affecting the aesthetics. The fourth is that it is not afraid of harsh external environmental influences, including light, fog, dust, high temperature, etc., so it can be used in any environment in the home. The fifth is that the data results are only presented in point clouds, so privacy can be effectively protected.

From Google Pixel 4 phones to NEST thermostats, from Qinglei's "Began Intelligent Healthcare Life Support System" to Sleepiz's home sleep monitoring solutions, more and more customers are adopting Infineon's millimeter-wave radar solutions to achieve full coverage from smart homes to healthy homes.

Wu Boyi said that there are four main operating calculation modes of millimeter-wave radar, namely Doppler, FSK, pulse and FMCW. The functions increase successively, and the development difficulty, cost and processing requirements also increase successively.

Infineon Technologies provides different types of millimeter-wave radars to meet the needs of different markets. Wu Boyi used BGT60LTR11AIP and BGT60TR13C as examples to introduce Infineon Technologies' rich portfolio.

BGT60LTR11AIP is a cost-effective solution. When it comes to motion detection, it can be detected in automatic mode without the need for an additional MCU. This product is a radar sensor based on the Doppler effect, integrating antenna package (AIP), RF transceiver and signal processing, with built-in multiple detection modes, adjustable resolution and distance, and supporting external MCU for custom development, so it is very easy to use. And the power consumption is only 5mW, which can completely replace the current PIR (traditional passive infrared) solution for motion or speed detection.

BGT60TR13C is a one-transmit-three-receive millimeter-wave radar with AIP, with a resolution of 3cm, which can realize heartbeat, breathing and other monitoring functions.

Wu Boyi said that Infineon's millimeter-wave radar has passed FCC and ETSI certification to ensure that it is harmless to the human body.

From Industry to Consumption - ToF Sensors

Similar to radar sensors, ToF also uses reflection to judge the distance and shape of objects. However, ToF is realized through the near-infrared band (850nm or 940nm), with higher resolution and shorter distance than radar, so the application scenarios can easily complement radar.

ToF is divided into dToF (direct Time-of-Flight) and iToF (indirect Time-of-Flight). dToF calculates the distance by directly recording the time difference between sending and receiving, while iToF measures the phase shift to indirectly measure the flight time of light and then calculates the distance. The two have different principles and therefore have their own advantages, which should be determined according to different application scenarios and test requirements.

ToF has been used in healthcare for many years. For at least the first two decades of MRI (magnetic resonance angiography), ToF MRA (magnetic resonance angiography) was the primary method used to image the human vascular system.

Zhang Tiehu, senior marketing manager of the Power and Sensor Systems Division of Infineon Technologies Greater China, said that with the help of ToF depth imaging technology and privacy protection, ToF has been applied to more medical and health fields. For example, it can realize fall detection without leaking privacy, and has been successfully applied to the monitoring systems of nursing homes and quarantine hotels.

In addition, in applications such as nursing robots/service robots, ToF is an important component of SLAM (localization and mapping).

Zhang Tiehu specifically mentioned the cooperation between Infineon and pmd Technology. PMD has been developing ToF industrial applications since 2002. In 2013, Infineon and pmd cooperated to develop smaller, lower power and more cost-effective products to apply ToF to a wider range of applications, including Face ID, gesture recognition, focus and other applications in mobile phones, as well as AR/VR.

At the same time, Zhang Tiehu also introduced the advantages of Infineon's products. Infineon and pmd have accumulated more than 400 patent technologies in the ToF field, one of which is a special circuit design that can filter out the interference of sunlight, so as to accurately obtain the depth information of the object. In addition, Infineon's ToF sensor is a large-resolution array ToF, so it can not only be used for distance measurement, but also an imaging system.

It is precisely because of the above factors that Infineon's products can play an important role in smart healthcare.

Carbon dioxide sensor born from the laboratory

Photoacoustic spectroscopy is the measurement of the absorption of radiant energy (especially light) by matter through acoustic detection. The study of the photoacoustic effect began in 1880 when Alexander Graham Bell discovered that when a rapidly intermittent beam of light hit a rotating slotted thin disk, the disk produced a sound. The energy absorbed by the object from the light caused local heating, resulting in thermal expansion and contraction that squeezed the air and produced sound. Bell later discovered that sound can also be produced when objects are exposed to the invisible parts of the solar spectrum (such as infrared and ultraviolet light).

Although photoacoustic spectroscopy has a long research history, it has not been widely commercialized in the past few years due to its high hardware cost and complex calculations. On the other hand, people's understanding of air quality has changed significantly compared to before, from only paying attention to indoor decoration air pollution to paying more attention to the impact of carbon dioxide on health. Studies have shown that, on the one hand, increased carbon dioxide concentration will reduce people's comfort; secondly, there is a correlation between carbon dioxide concentration and aerosols, which are one of the transmission routes of viruses (such as new crown or influenza). Therefore, if we can reliably detect the carbon dioxide concentration in indoor spaces, we can actively control the risk of virus transmission.