Agustín Miguel Laprovitta

A low-cost configurability test strategy for an embedded analog circuit

This paper proposes a configurable test strategy for an embedded analog configurable circuit (EACC) composed by operational amplifiers and interconnection resources that are present in the MSP430 microcontroller family from Texas Instruments®. The test strategy is particularly useful for in-field application requiring reliability, safe operation or fault tolerance characteristics. The strategy minimizes the cost in hardware overhead by employing only the hardware and software resources of the microcontroller. Our test proposal consists in programming all EACC configurations and testing its functionality by measuring only a few parameters. The processor executes an embedded test routine that sequentially programs the configurations, acquires data from an ADC channel and performs required calculations. The test strategy is experimentally evaluated using commercial hardware provided by the vendor. Our experimental results show very good repeatability, with errors below the expected.

Applying the analog configurability test approach in a wireless sensor network application

This work addresses the application of the analog configurability test (ACT) approach for an embedded analog configurable circuit (EACC), composed of operational amplifiers and interconnection resources that are embedded in the MSP430xG461x microcontrollers family. This test strategy is particularly useful for in-field application requiring reliability, safe operation, or fault tolerance characteristics. Our test proposal consists of programming a reduced set of available configurations for the EACC and testing its functionality bymeasuring only a few key parameters. The processor executes an embedded test routine that sequentially programs selected configurations, sets the test stimulus, acquires data from the internal ADC, and performs required calculations. The test approach is experimentally evaluated using an embedded system-based real application board. Our experimental results show very good repeatability, with very low errors. These results show that the ACT proposed here is useful for testing the functionality of the circuit under test in a real application context by using a simple strategy at a very low cost.

Wireless plataforms for the monitoring of biomedical variables

The present paper aims to analyze and to compare two wireless platforms for the monitoring of biomedical variables. They must obtain the vital signals of the patients, transmit them through a radio frequency bond and centralize them for their process, storage and monitoring in real time. The implementation of this system permit us to obtain two important benefits; The patient will enjoy greater comfort during the internment, and the doctors will be able to know the state of the biomedical variables of each patient, in simultaneous form. In order to achieve the objective of this work, two communication systems for wireless transmissions data were developed and implemented. The CC1000 transceiver was used in the first system and the Bluetooth module was used in the other system.