On the design of distributed autonomous embedded systems for biomedical applications

Embedded systems assume an increasing importance in several biomedical applications. These applications present dissimilar requirements and characteristics, posing problems at the computing and communication levels. This paper proposes a general network based platform that follows a distributed approach based on a client/server architecture, in order to integrate embedded systems for biomedical applications. This platform makes use of autonomous communication modules, and relies on personal digital assistants to act as Masters, and to interconnect the embedded systems to computer networks. Information is sent to a main server that maintains and provides access to a database. Data security is assured in all systems by using cryptographic algorithms and protocols. Two embedded systems have been developed based on this platform, a simple system for movement monitoring, and another for biomolecular recognition detection. Furthermore, we show that the optimization of the communication module lead to an increase of 70% of the platform's autonomy for the movement monitoring system.