Runtime Reconfiguration of FPGA for Biomedical Applications

This paper describes the usage of Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) to explore reconfiguration to help out in the field of Biomedical Applications. The FPGA is reconfigured at runtime to analyze parameters like temperature, heart rate, blood pressure of patients and identify the conditions as normal, critical or emergency. According to the applications implemented there are two ways used to approach the Dynamic Partial Reconfiguration (DPR) practically. First is to configure the FPGA before reconfiguration and this part is known as static or fixed programming. Next part we reconfigure the FPGA again and run the program this is known as the partial reconfigurable part of the system. Basically initially two nodes are taken a temperature sensor along with the smoke sensor, after reconfiguration two more nodes are incorporated photo detector and Infrared Radiation (IR) sensor. Runtime reconfiguration is done to monitor parameters like blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen saturation etc. The runtime reconfiguration is carried out where we allow the user to enter the patient number and FPGA displays the condition of that particular patient at runtime. Hence a particular patients output can be observed. For which we can have n input patients and we can get the monitored continuous status of the nth patient. Such type of the program can be useful to send data wireless to the doctor and patient can be checked for the particular parameter. The outcomes involve displaying normal condition at temperature 98 °F & respiration rate of 17 inhalations per minute, displaying critical condition at temperature 102 ° F & respiration rate of 30 inhalations per minute, displaying emergency condition at temperature 96 ° F & respiration rate 127 inhalations per minute, emergency condition for the heart rate and the oxygen saturation levels of the patient while the temperature module keeps on function but not displayed. Also displayed is DPR for heart rate 70 bpm and oxygen saturation of 95 % indicates the normal condition, critical condition in DPR for heart rate 35 bpm and oxygen saturation at 85 %, emergency condition in DPR for heart rate 165bpm and oxygen saturation at 60%. Normal condition in DPR for bpl 85 mmHg and bph 120 mmHg. The blood pressure of patient is monitored as normal condition in DPR for bpl 88 mm Hg and bph 108 mm Hg. Normal condition in DPR18 for bpl 94 mmHg and bph 150 mmHg. The above work can be successfully incorporated for patient health monitoring and can be further improved by sending wirelessly the data to a central hub if the patient’s location is at some remote place.