Enhanced Telemetry System using CP-QPSK Band-

Pass Modulation Technique Suitable for Smart Pill

Medical Application
Nidal Fawaz
Institute for Applied Research
Offenburg, Germany
fawaz@fh-offenburg.de
Dirk Jansen
Institute for Applied Research
Offenburg, Germany
d.jansen@fh-offenburg.de


Abstract A new approach of continuous phase QPSK Band-
Pass modulation technique is being developed as enhancement to
the QPSK modulation scheme for inductive data transmission
(NFC). The modulation is based on Gaussian filtering of the
phase transition from one state to the other rather than
discontinuity in phase shift. The carrier is based on low
frequency 115 KHz suitable for human body energy penetration
due to its large skin-depth and lower inductive power
attenuation. The complete signal processing is done digitally,
external coil and capacitor is used for transceiver interface. The
telemetry assists a smart pill swallowed by human being to
trigger an actuator for drug delivery, record temperature, or
perform diagnostic task inside the body. The smart pill includes
32bit processor, 16 Kbyte memory, temperature sensor,
telemetry unit, and additional external peripheries. The complete
system is designed, embedded in one SoC, and realized on ASIC
with chip-area less than 14 mm.
Wireless communication; DSP; ASIC; SOC; RFID
I. INTRODUCTION
Development of electronics in the last decades opened the
door for sophisticated equipments to be enrolled in therapeutic
and diagnostic applications in medical field. Smart, tiny, and
multipurpose equipments are growing rapidly in this domain.
One of these applications is to diagnose the gastrointestinal
tract (GI) for different biomedical analysis as sensing for
temperature, pH, intestinal bacterial flora, intraluminal enzyme
content or mucosal biopsies that are concentrated in the small
intestine. Another application could be used to deliver or
release pharmaceutically active compounds, food stuff, or
vaccine to a chosen location in the GI, as an example the
delivery of chemotherapeutic drugs to the colon of patients
having colon cancer. These applications are assisted by
telemetry communication to handle out control and data
retrieve from inside the body.
Figure 1 shows a concept of telemetry communication
between external device and internal electronic pill. The
external device works as a master while the electronic pill
serves as a slave. This concept is similar to the RFID
communication system based on interrogator or reader (master)
and the transponder (slave).

Figure 1. Concept of telemetry system from within the the body to the
outisde using near field communication (NFC) interface
Such electronic pills exist since 1960s where Mackay
invented the first radio telemetry capsule with one transistor in
1957 [1], and the first successful pH sensor capsule was
achieved in 1972 [2], since then further improvement are going
on to produce more advanced and self controlled systems to
carry out more complicated tasks as drug delivery and
diagnostic operation inside the body. Table 1 lists most of these
capsules with their specification [1-8].
Communication system in these pills varies from basic
Hartley oscillator unidirectional transmitter with low carrier
frequency to more advanced transceiver with high carrier
frequency up to 2.4 GHz. The first pills used simple transmitter
with low carrier frequency suffer from primitive and limited
signal processing while advanced pills used complicated
circuits with high frequency carrier suffered from higher
attenuation when the transmitted signal propagates inside the
body. This paper presents an optimized solution between using
a low carrier frequency and signal processing for bidirectional
data transfer from-to the body.
II. ELECTRONIC PILL CONCEPT
A new electronic capsule with bidirectional communication
system is being developed for multi-task application. The
capsule is designed to be a platform for medical assistant
inside the body. The designed telemetry unit has synchronous
bidirectional communication block using continuous phase
QPSK of 115 KHz low carrier frequency for inductive data
transmission suited for human body energy transfer.
The communication system can assist the electronic pill to
trigger an actuator for drug delivery, to record temperature, or
to measure pH of the body. It consists additionally to a 32bit
processor, memory, and external peripheries [9]. The complete
system is designed to fit small-size mass medical application
with low power consumption, size of 7x25mm, and invasive
for swallow ability. The first version of this capsule is
powered by a small lithium battery and holds for three days
which is the expected stay duration of the capsule inside the
body. Figure 1 shows the electronic pill (ePille) construction
[10], this paper focuses on the enhanced modulation of the
telemetry unit of this capsule.

Figure 2. ePille concept of drug delivery

III. COMMUNICATION
Back to the general equation of a sinusoidal carrier which is
defined as follows:
[ ]
c c c
t f A t c + = 2 cos ) ( (1)
where A
c
is the carrier amplitude, f
c
is the carrier frequency,
and
c
is the carrier phase. These three parameters identify three
distinct forms of modulation: Amplitude modulation (ASK),
Frequency modulation (FSK), and Phase modulation (PSK).
Other modulations are derived from these three schemes.
The instantaneous frequency is defined as the frequency
that is present at a particular instant of time:
[ ] ) (
2
1
) ( t t w
dt
d
t f
c i

+ =
(2)

+ =
dt
t d
f t f
c i
) (
2
1
) (

(3)
and the frequency deviation is:

= =
dt
t d
f t f t f
c i d
) (
2
1
) ( ) (

(4)
In QPSK modulation, the angle phase is shifted from one
value to another in a time limit that tends to zero as shown in
figure 3 (a).



Figure 3. Comparison between hard shift (a) and smooth shift (b)
These transient shiftings lead to generate a wide spectrum
with high effect side lobes. To decrease these side effect lobes
and increase the power within a limited bandwidth a Gaussian
filter is used to smooth this transient shift within a symbol
duration as shown in figure 3 (b).
2

1

t
T
symbol


t
2
1
(a)
(b)
TABLE I
LIST OF CAPSULES WITH THEIR SPECIFICATIONS
Capsules
Freq.
(MHz)
Size
(mm)
Remarks
InteliSite 6.78 35x10 Pulsed release
Telemetric 108 39x11 Radioactive free
Enterion 1.8 32x12 Pulsed release
HF Capsule 4 28x12 Pulsed release
Gastrotarget N.A. N.A. Dummy Unit Localizer
ChipRx N.A. N.A. Continues release
Temp. pill 1 35x9 known as NASA pill
SmartPill N.A. N.A. Multi-sensors
BRAVO 433 25x6 Attached to Esophagus
Radio Pill 0.35 22x9 1st radio pill in 1957
Heidelberg pH 1.9 18x8
Microcapsule 433 23x10 MEMS Tech.
Tohoku pH N.A. 2x2 In progress
IDEAS 38 36x12 Mutli-sensors
PillCam/M2A N.A. 27x11 Pioneer
Norika 2400 23x9 State-of-the-art
Endoscope 433/315 30x11
IVP 900/1 23x11 High power transmission

The idea is to increase the carrier frequency and decrease it
back to the original value or vice versa within a period of one
symbol, this process leads an increment or decrement of phase
shift and accordingly achieved the desired phase shift value, for
example {45 or 135}.
The deviation of the frequency has a Gaussian distribution
as shown in figure 4 with filter order of 13. The effect of this
Gaussian filter is on the carrier frequency, it increases till
maximum frequency value at the middle and then decreases
back to its original value.

Figure 4. Gaussian distribution (a), Filter coefficients (b),
and filter effect on carrier signal (c)
The frequency-time relation is described as follows:
2
2

1
2
) (

|
|

\
|

+ =
K
T
t
c i
symbol
e K f t f

(5)
Equating (3) and (5):
2
2

1
2
) (
2
1

|
|

\
|

+ =

+
K
T
t
c c
symbol
e K f
dt
t d
f

(6)

2
2

1
2
) (
2
1

|
|

\
|

K
T
t
symbol
e K
dt
t d

(7)
dt e K t
t
K
T
t
symbol
=

|
|

\
|

2
2

1
2
2 ) (

(8)
A closed form of the Gaussian integration function does not
exist, math tables or numerical integration techniques must be
used to evaluate it.
A definition for that is the Error function erf(x) or Q
function, they are used to replace the integration form and they
are known as the cumulative distribution function (CDF) for
the Gaussian distribution :
) ( ) ( ) ( t erf K t Q t
(9)
A closed form for the modulated signal can be described as
[ ] ) ( cos ) ( t erf K t w A t v
c
+ =
(10)
The coefficients of the filter are listed in table 2.
A similar behavior could be understood from MSK and
GMSK, in fact the GMSK is based on FSK modulation with
Gaussian filtering while CP-QPSK is based on PSK
modulation where the phase itself is filtered.

Figure 5. Simulation result of the transmitted and received signals
Demodulated
Modulated
(b)
(c)
(a)
Min. Freq.
deviation
Max. Freq.
deviation
v(t)
t
b
0
b
1
b
2
b
3
b
4
b
5
b
6
b
5
b
4
b
3
b
2
b
1
b
0
f
deviation
t
t
f
deviation
T
symbol
TABLE II
GAUSSIAN FILTER COEFFICIENTS
Coefficients +45 +135
b
0
5 0000101 15 000001111
b
1
13 0001101 40 000101000
b
2
30 0011110 90 001011010
b
3
56 0111000 169 010101001
b
4
89 1011001 265 100001001
b
5
116 1110100 348 101011100
b
6
126 1111110 380 101111100

A digital PLL is designed to reconstruct the transmitted
signal from the digital bit stream of the received signal. The
reference frequency of the PLL is 115 kHz with 16bit offset
and 12bit corrector value. The decision circuit integrates the
area under the curve after the PLL output, the value of the
integration is compared to a LUT where the ranges of the four
different symbols are defined. A FIR filter is additionally used
to reconstruct the symbol clock synchronizing the symbol rate.
IV. DESIGN TO LAYOUT PROCESS
The complete system is designed using VHDL
programming. The telemetry unit and its signal processing are
completely coded in digital except the external interface.
An amplifier stage with comparator at the receiver side of
2
nd
order with gain factor of 200 is designed and simulated by
Spice software.
The digital part is simulated using ModelSim software from
Mentor Graphics tools. Figure 5 shows a simulation result of
the frequency instantiation before transmitted and the received
signal after recovery. The signals construct and reconstruct the
filter Gaussian filter behavior, the area under the curve
represents directly the phase angle shift and respectively the
data encoded in the signal.

Figure 6. Layout of the SoC in 0.35m AMS technology
After Successive emulation of the transmitter and receiver,
a complete layout of the chip with its processor and all other
external peripheries are routed with 0.35 m AMS technology.

Figure 7. ePille ASIC Chip with bonding, area less than 14 mm
After simulation the complete codes are synthesized by
synopsis software to generate the FPGA and ASIC verilog
netlist. Cyclone II from Altera is used to emulate the FPGA
netlist of the design, and the ASIC netlist is used for ASIC
layout. Digital placement was done by Encounter software
from Cadence and analog placement was done by IC station
from Mentor graphics. The complete layout is shown in figure
6, the telemetry unit with its digital and analog amplifier has a
coverage area of 1 mm.
Figure 7 shows the complete ASIC chip of ePille, the
chip has an area of 14 mm.
V. RESULTS
DUT showed successful running chip with good
performance. The chip consumes 3 mW during transmitting
and receiving at a distance of 20 cm, while 5W during sleep
mode. The spectrum showed attenuated side lobes of 20 dB
with respect to a normal QPSK as seen in Figure 8 with
improved power efficiency of 10 %.

Figure 8. Spectrum of QPSK (a) and CP-QPSK (b)
(a) QPSK Signal Spectrum
(b)
(b) CP-QPSK Signal Spectrum
RAM RAM
Telemetry Processor Analog
VI. CONCLUSION
A complete telemetry unit based on CP-QPSK Band-Pass
Modulation is designed, simulated, emulated and layout.
Enhancement in modulation technique led to a better spectrum
and higher performance with respect to QPSK. Additional
work is needed to be done for final acquisition and
performance.
REFERENCES
[1] Mackay, Endoradiosonde Nature, vol. 179, 1957.
[2] Meldrom, pH profile pf gut as measured by radio telemetry capsule
Br. Med. Vol. 2, pp. 104, 1972.
[3] Wilding, Hirst, Development of a new engineering-based capsule for
human drug absorptions studies PSTT vol 3, 2000.
[4] Houzego, Patent WO 01/45552 A1, 2001.
[5] www.chiprx.com
[6] G. Iddan, Wireless Capsule Endoscopy, Nature,vol 405, 2000.
[7] www.rfnorika.com
[8] http://ivp.ims-chips.de
[9] D. Jansen, N. Fawaz, D. Bau, M. Durrenberger: A Small High
Performance Microprocessor Core SIRIUS For Embedded Low Power
Designs, Demonstrated in a Medical Mass Application Of an Electronic
Pill (ePille), Embedded System Design Topic, Techniques and
Trends, Springer p. 363-372, 2007.
[10] N. Fawaz, D. Jansen: A SoC Electronic Pill (ePille) with 32bit
SIRIUS Processor and Bidrectioanl Communicaiton System used for
Biomedical Telemetry Applications, International Conference on
Information & Communucaiton Technologies from Theroy to
Applications ICTTA08, IEEE Communication Society, p. 63-64,
April 2008.