A biosignal acquisition and conditioning board as a cross-course senior design project

Abstract

In a single-semester course that incorporates both lecture and design, time constraints make it difficult to provide students with a substantive design experience that addresses multiple system elements. This paper presents a design experience that addressed numerous facets of a biomedical signal acquisition system by merging design credits for two undergraduate, senior-level courses: EECE 773 - Bioinstrumentation Design Laboratory and EECE 628 - Electronic Instrumentation. The innovative effort joined the sensor circuitry and signal display elements of a bioinstrumentation course with the data acquisition and serial communication topics often taught in electronic instrumentation courses. The overall goals of this project were to (a) create a substantial, design-driven learning experience for electrical engineering seniors and (b) increase student interest by attaching a biomedical context to an instrumentation project that would otherwise be generic. These goals were supported by 11 learning objectives that address clinical context, project planning, project roles, signal conditioning, signal management, printed circuit board development, biomedical data display, and written communication. In the initial project offering, 18 students were divided into three teams, each of which designed and built a system to acquire, process, and display data from multiple biomedical sensors, where the signal conditioning functionality for each sensor was remotely programmable. Each acquisition board communicated with a custom Lab VIEW interface via a Universal Serial Bus link. Development foci for each team changed over time as technical choices led to unexpected design complexities. Assessment of the experience was provided via a post- project survey that addressed the 11 learning objectives, learning in 16 technical areas, interpersonal team dynamics, and project administration. Survey results mirrored informal student comments: while this effort required a substantial time commitment relative to a typical course project, the learning and satisfaction derived were worth the investment.