8 Experts on Overcoming Challenges of RF Solution Design 25
"The trick is finding the best balance among the physical
characteristics of the device . . ., power consumption, and RF
performance to meet your design requirement."
Li Ji
Senior Hardware Engineer
Avanos Medical
Li Ji has twenty years of experience as
a hardware engineer. He is proficient
with analog and digital circuits as well
as embedded system design. He holds
master's degrees in electrical engineering
and computer science. For the past few
years, his design interest has focused on
wearable medical devices and the Internet
of Medical Things.
In wirelessly connected medical devices, you have multiple choices for wireless
technology. The trick is finding the best balance among the physical characteristics
of the device (such as wearables), power consumption, and radio-frequency (RF)
performance to meet your design requirement.
For example, the short-range connectivity that Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) provides may
be good enough if the device connects to an application on a smartphone. If the device
is in a hospital, however, and needs to connect over a long range, maybe from a patient
room to a nursing center, you need architecture to support that scenario. You could build
a Wi-Fi module into your device to connect to an information center directly, or you could
build a gateway that goes into a room and connects to your BLE device. Then, you have
Wi-Fi inside that gateway that connects to the information center. Or, you could build a
cellular module into your device that connects directly to a cellular network.
Power consumption is a big consideration. If you are designing a wearable device and
you want to build Wi-Fi into it, you cannot have a wire connected to it because that
would require a large battery—and would not be practical for a wearable device. With
BLE that connects to a smartphone app, you can build a much lighter device with a
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