Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE

Engineering in Medicine and Biology 27th Annual Conference

Shanghai, China, September 1-4, 2005

Design and Application of Embedded System Based

on ARM7 LPC2104 Processor in Telemedicine∗
†
Ya-lin Miao , Xiang-lin Miao, Zheng-Zhong Bian , Yong-jie Zhang
Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China
E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract-This paper, based on ARM7 processor and real- real-time, Philips Company’s LPC2104 is a much better
time embedded operating system (µC/OS-II), establishes an choice. LPC2104 processor belongs to one of ARM7TDMI-
embedded telemedicine platform ground on LPC2104 and S ARM processors.
realizes some very popular embedded application technologies
such as USB communication, embedded Internet II THE INTRODUCTION OF LPC2104 PROCESSOR
communication, infrared communication, etc. Meanwhile the
LPC2104 micro-controller [3] [4] is developed by Philips
volume of the hardware is smaller; power consumption is
lower; the functions are mightier and the expansibility is semiconductor based on 16/32bit ARM7TDMI-S CPU and
stronger. In addition, for the embedded real-time µC/OS- II in owns 128/256K bytes high speed Flash memory micro-
use has gone through the reliability authentication, the whole controller. Moreover, 128-bit breadth storage interface and
running system is more stable and the program maintenance special accelerated structure can make the 32bit code run at
and update is more convenient. The telemedicine system based the maximum of speed. The application of strictly
on this technology has been tested to be stable and efficient, controlling code scale can use 16bit Thumb pattern to
and has obtained the results as expected. decrease more than 30% of the code scale, but the losing
Key Words-Embedded System, Real-time Operating System, performance would be very little. For LPC2104 micro-
Data Acquisition, Repeater, ARM processor, Telemedicine
controller that uses very small 64 pins encapsulation, much
I SUMMARY lower consumption, many 32bit localizers and as many as 9
external interrupt, which makes it especially suit to
E mbedded processor is the core of the embedded system
and the linchpin is to select the processor. At present,
ARM processor spreads through different kinds of product
industrial control, medical system, remote access control,
electronic cashing machine and some other small-scale
application fields. Embedded inner wide serial
market such as industrial control, telemedicine, electronic
communication interface, they are also very suitable to the
product consumption, communication system, etc. The communication gateway protocol converter, embedded
micro-processor found on ARM technology holds 75% software modem and so on.
market share of 32 bit RISC processors [1]. Besides, ARM The main characters are:
processors include ARM7, ARM9, ARM9E, ARM10E, • very small encapsulation: TQFP48(7*7mm2);
SecurCore, Intel’s Xscale and Intel’s StrongARM [2], etc. In • 128K bytes Flash program memory in chip, has the
these, ARM7, ARM9, ARM9E and ARM10E belong to the function of ISP(In-System Programming) and IAP(In-
common processor series. Application Programming,) function; 16K bytes static
The series of ARM7 processors are 32bit RISC RAM
processors with low power consumption, which suit to those • double UART, one with a complete Modem interface;
products that are exigent to the price and power I2C, SPI serial interface;
consumption. The characters of ARM7 are shown as below: • two timers, with four bugged/compare channel; six
• The exceptionally low power consumption; output PWM units; real-time clock; watch dog timer;
• Offer third grade pipeline architecture of • 32bit general I/O
0.9MIPS/MHZ(fetching instruction, decoding and • CPU operation frequency can reach 60MHz; double
running); power supply( CPU operation voltage range:
• The maximum master frequency adds up to 130MIPS; 1.65V~1.95V, I/O voltage range: 3.0V~3.6V); two low
• The high coding density and supporting 16bit Thumb power consumption pattern(idle and break)
instruction set;
III TELEMEDICINE SYSTEM HARDWARE DESIGN
• Supporting OS that includes Windows CE, Linux, Palm
OS and so on. A. System Function Summary
According to these requests including low power
consumption, low cost, small volume, multi-functions and The system adopts framework design thought of

∗
Foundation Item: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant NO.60271022 and NO.60271025 and
international cooperate.
†
Biography: Yalin Miao, male, born in 1976, Dr., major in the research of signal processing.

0-7803-8740-6/05/$20.00 ©2005 IEEE. 2187

modularization, which divides the equipment into main It is shown that after adding a few components and
module and other function modules (fig 1). There is a circuits surrounding LPC2104, the eligible circuit of the
uniform or special interface form between the main module main controlled module can be designed (fig 2).
and other modules. The user can select different function
B. LPC2104 Pin Allocation and Analog bus
modules according to their own needs. Different kinds of
data can transmit synchronously but not interrupt each other. LPC2104 has only 64 pins and no peripheral bus
Meanwhile, some other functional modules can be controller. So there is no peripheral bus and it is not very
expanded depending on the market demand, for example the convenient to connect the extra lip. But for their speed is
photo electricity communication module , fetal heart rate very fast, the extra lip that is connected with bus simulated
monitoring etc. The design structure is convenient not only by software is much faster than the common SCM. Thus we
to use but also to update. should make use of LPC2104 simulating bus extra lip to
The main control module is mainly up to human- meet the design demands.
computer interaction, communication with functional Except for those pins such as power supply, reset and
modules, data storage, data transmission, etc. Through crystal oscillator, LPC2104 has 32 common programmable
controlling the main functional module, the user may I/O interface of function multiplexing (P0.0~P0.31). In the
operate the functional module as well as other system system design, UART0 occupies P0.0 and P0.1; I2C
functions and the data will be saved in the main control occupies P0.2 and P0.3; UART1 occupies P0.8 and P0.9;
module. Then the main control module can send data to the key-press occupies P0.14 and P0.15. In the rest pins, the
server or communicate with palm computer through infrared eight continuous I/O interfaces from P0.17 to P0.24 are used
modules in the form of wire dialers or PC linked with to simulate 8bit D/A bus, P0.4 simulates address locked
Internet through USB interface. This three data transmission signal (ALE), P0.5 simulates read signal (RD), P0.6
mode can satisfy the requirements of the majority of user. simulates write signal (WR) as shown as Fig 3.
human-computer Analog bus is designed to offset the deficiency of
interaction LPC2104 that has no peripheral bus. During the course of
ECG
bus running, it can not be interrupted. So interrupt should be
animal heat QHWZRUN off/on before and after the bus access and the analog bus
USB OLQH need to initialize.
blood pressure
modem Internet
blood sugar infrared
SKRQHOLQH 8 bit data/address
signal
server
module palm computer
other module

main control module

Fig. 1 Embedded Data Acquisition system module

Based on the design thinking of the whole system, the

choice of the processor is a critical problem when designing
the hardware circuit of the main module is designed. So
LPC2104 of Philips Company is a very bright choice
according to the demands of low power consumption, low Fig. 3 The pin allocation of LPC2104 simulated bus
cost, small volume and multifunction. C. Man-Machine Interaction
power The Design principle of man-machine interaction aims to
USB use the simplest method, which adopts dot-matrix LCD
section
128*64 dot-matrix LCD PDIUSBD12
display module and three key combinations.
real-time LCD selects MG12824-7 dot-matrix LCD module[5], the
clock
displaying capability is 128*64 dots, the volume is
I2C analog bus
E2PROM 54*50*5cm3, the inside has -10V voltage creator as well as
LPC2104 EL apheliotropic inverter and provides 5V power supply,
ECG infrared communica communica
module communica UAR 3 external UAR tion tion which is very convenient for the portable product
tion T0 interrupt T1 equipment network application.
other
function
3 keys electrical
al level
modules conversion
main control module

Fig. 2 The structure of main controlled module

2188
 MAX3232 (fig 6).

8 bit data/address bus

Fig. 4 The circuit of LCD module

Since the work voltage of LCD module is 5V and the

voltage of LPC2104 I/O is 3.3V, a bus transceiver
Fig. 5 The part circuit of USB
74LVC4245 is needed between processor and LCD module
(fig 4). 74LVC4245 is a transceiver that owns two power
supply and works under the two voltages: 5V is VCCA in
the A side and I/O interface linking with 5V digital circuit;
3.3V is VCCA in the B side and I/O interface linking with
3.3V digital circuit; DIR pin can control the transmission Offer function
direction. So through using 74LVC4245, the voltage logic module interface
conversion between 3.3V and 5V can be realized. It is
shown in the fig4 that when LPC2104 operates LCD
modules by analog bus, P0.7 is used to control the direction
of data bus. Besides, LCD module doesn’t use to the
apheliotropic function according to the demand of stinting
power. Offer modem interface
The three key-presses are connected with two peripheral Fig. 6 Serial interface circuit
interrupt pins through AND gates. The key-press part adopts
E. Other Components
interrupting input and reduces the work load of processor.
More importantly, the function is awaked by the two LPC2104 with I2C bus is very convenient to expand some
2
interrupt power down. When the processor isn’t at work, it I C components. In order to save user personal information,
will enter the state of power down. As the processor needs the main controlled module expands one 1K E2PROM lip
to response the key-press and the processor is waked from (CSI24WC08) in the I2C bus of LPC2104, which works
the power down, the power consumption can decrease under the condition of 3.3V and the address of I2C bus is:
greatly. read: 0xA1, 0xA3, 0xA5, 0xA7; write: 0xA0, 0xA2, 0xA4,
0xA6.
D. Communication
The communication of the main controlled module
divides into three parts: USB, UART0 and UART1. USB is
used to connect the main controlled module and PC, which
driver chip D12 uses address/data bus link mode, LPC2104
uses peripheral interrupt 0 ( fig 5 ). UART0 is used to
communicate among different modules including infrared
communication module. Except the infrared module needs
another I/0 interface (P0.25) to select baud control signal,
other modules only need to connect with the three lines
including TXD0, RXD0 and GND of UART0. UART1 is Fig. 7 I2C component circuit
used to communicate with Modem. The interface of
peripheral Modem is RS232, which links Modem with
UARR1’s TXD1, RXD1 after being converted by
2189
 B. System Program Flow
After completing initialization, the system enters the main
program-main () (fig 10). In the main program, the task still
need to be initialized and sets up the other necessary
assignments as well as key-press responses. After entering
the multitask dispatch, it will not to return the main ().

µ&26,,LQLWLDOL]H

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VHWXSPHVVDJHPDLOER[DQGTXHXH

Fig. 8 The three key-press circuit IRXQGWDVN

LCD display panel includes the main interface as well as 266WDUW

message view and the main interface displays the current
selected parameter set and current state (run/fail/cancel); HQWHULQJPXOWLWDVNGLVSDWFK
message view displays the current state, error, etc. The
whole panel and key-press design are combined tightly. It is Fig. 10 Main program flow
easy to use and all functions can be completed within 1~3
key-presses (fig 8). CONCLUSION
IV TELEMEDICINE SYSTEM SOFTWARE DESIGN The system is based on the embedded technology of
Adopt embedded real-time µC/OS-II, use ARM and ARM processor in the development and research of data
Thumb instruction set mixed compilation to optimize the collection. The main goal of designing hardware is to meet
code density. the demand of low cost, low power consumption, small
volume and real-time. It adopts LPC2104 micro-processor,
A. Assignment Allocation and Software System Architecture
sets up a embedded platform based on LPC2104 and
the user priority has six assignments: realizes some applications such as USB communication,
• Setup the key-press response, the priority is 6; embedded Internet communication, infrared communication,
• Administer systemic work state, the priority is 5; etc. So the whole system performance increases greatly. The
• LCD module display, the priority is 4; processor software is based on the embedded real-time OS
• Through Modem dial, the communication assignment of and utilizes the multitask structure. The software system is
accessing to Internet, the priority is 3;
more canonical and meanwhile, it is far more efficient and
• Through USB communication assignment, the priority is
2; reliable in real running according to the demand of
• Communicate with other modules ,and process to collect embedded OS and module design.
and store data sample, the priority is 1. REFERENCES
Software structure is shown in the Fig 9.
[1] Li Juguang, The detailed introduction of ARM application system
(,17ǃ(,17 development---based on S3C4510B System Design, TSINGHUA
UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2003
VWDUWXSWDVN /&'PRGXOH [2] Du Chunlei, ARM architecture and programming. 2003.8
VZHHSLQJNH\LQJ GLVSOD\
[3] LPC2106/2105/2104 User Manual, Preliminary Release, Philips
Semiconductors,2003.7
RIIHUV\VWHPPRGH [4] LPC2100 manual, Guangzhou Zhouli SCM Ltd. ,. 2004.2
UHFDQWDQGWDVN
WUDQVODWLRQ [5] TRULY LCD MODULE MSC-G12864DGEB-7Z,Version1.2,
1999.3

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PRGXOH RIIHU86% RIIHUPRGHP
FRPPXQLFDWLRQ FRPPXQLFDWLRQ FRPPXQLFDWLRQ

8$57 (,17 8$57

Fig. 9 Software system structure

2190