OTTAWA —An
old proverb says the best things in life come in small
packages. If this holds true then a revolutionary new
transmitter package for wireless internet and network
devices invented by a pair of Carleton University PhD
students might very well be the greatest of them all – a
pinhead-sized chip contained within a package the size
of a fingernail.
The TX chip contains a small wireless
transmitter that allows it to communicate with a larger
transmission antenna within the greater package structure.
Upon commencing their PhD studies in 2005, Atif Shamim and
Muhammad Arsalan decided they wanted to work together on
a project, but the two Pakistan-born scientists had trouble
finding that one perfect application for their two areas
of interest: sensors and wireless antennas.
“For our PhD topic we were both inclined towards a
practical application which was usable, not just another
thesis that was 200 pages and nobody would ever read it,” says
Arsalan.
Transmission start . . .
'It’s like
if you want to leave your house: you can go through the
living room and then out through the front door – that’s
the normal way of doing it. ... But
all the life is in the kitchen, right? So you could just
go from the kitchen and right out the back door … that’s
what we’ve done … we haven’t followed
the regular route out to the front.'
They soon joined a collaborative project between Carleton
University and Ottawa-based biomedical company Best Medical
Canada Ltd, designing a new wireless version of a sensor
called a dosimeter to monitor radiation doses in patients
during cancer treatments. Within several months, the pair
successfully created a smaller, more efficient, and successfully
wireless model – featuring
an operational range of two metres. They quickly began to
probe other applications for this technology.
“The utility of that device is very limited,” says
Arsalan. “Maybe nuclear plants or outer space, but
the technology is usable to make any sensor wireless, so
why not just use it for a more common purpose?”
This was the spark for Vital Signs Monitoring Technologies,
a company that the two men are attempting to establish to
market their wireless sensors for monitoring various data
in patients, such as heart-rate, temperature and blood pressure.
“When you go to the hospital you see patients in the
critical care unit and they’re always tangled in wires,” says
Arsalan. “We did some market research and we found
that there was a huge need for such devices.”
. . . Signal interrupted . . .
Seeking to improve upon their original creation, Shamim
added a more powerful antenna to the circuit to increase
the signal range. He was successful, but at the cost of a
significantly larger consumption of power, leaving him searching
to find a way to maintain the gain in range without the side
effect.
“I figured out that if we removed the amplifiers somehow – those
connections that go from the circuit to the external antenna – we
would save a lot of power,” says Shamim. “This
means that we would have to make some kind of [smaller] wireless
connection with the antenna [within the transmitter itself]…which
is totally unconventional.”
Shamim did just that, removing several previously essential
components from the chip in the process, which in turn looks
to significantly decrease production costs.
Langis Roy, chair of the department
of electronics at Carleton University, and PhD student
Atif Shamim analyze a wireless transmitter chip inside
a radio-interference insulated room.
“It’s like if you want to leave your house:
you can go through the living room and then out through the
front door – that’s the normal way of doing it,” says
Langis Roy, the duo's PhD advisor and chair of the Carleton
University department of electronics. “But all the
life is in the kitchen, right? So you could just go from
the kitchen and right out the back door…that’s
what we’ve done…we haven’t followed the
regular route out to the front.”
Shamim says he has frequently been asked how he came up
with this innovation when no one else in the industry could.
“They were not stuck in their thesis as I was: I was
trying to graduate,” he joked.
“You don’t normally design functional circuitry
in the package, the package is just an afterthought,” says
Roy of Shamim’s design. “Now we’re actually
engineering the package. That’s the real story.”
. . . New transmission
Shamim and Arsalan are currently pushing to finish their
respective PhDs this spring,
but both say they have become completely swamped by the business
aspects of VSM Technologies as of late – trying to
secure the patents for their innovation, and establish a
solid foundation for their company.
They are confident that the company
and their wireless sensor innovation will be a true culmination
to their original thesis project, and they feel it is a sign
of things to come – for
both themselves, and the world of electronics.
“I was looking for a neat application for these small
transmitters. ...That’s where the trend is: make is
cheaper, smaller, more efficient, so I think this is a good
step towards that,” says Shamim.
“It’s just a matter of time when these things
will be more economically feasible and adoptable for everyone,” Arsalan
agreed. “That will be the future of any sensor: the
wires have to go.”
Over
the course of their PhD studies, Atif Shamim and Muhammad
Arsalan - the dynamic duo of electronics - have received
numerous accolades for their research on wireless transmitter
packages:
November 2007: 1st Place Tie:
SMC (Strategic Electronics Council) Industrial Collaboration
Award - for their presentation entitled DOSIMETER:
Wireless Microchips in LTCC Package for Biomedical
and Space Applications.
December 2007 ITAC (Information
Technology Association of Canada) Strategic Microelectronics
Council Industrial Collaboration Award – for
their work on the wireless dosimeter project (an
innovative project that has the greatest potential
for commercialization).
March 2008 1st Place: Wes Nicol
Business Plan Competition - Carleton University’s
Sprott School of Business - for "Vital
Signs Monitoring Technologies" business plan.
April 2008 OCRI Student Researchers
of the Year: Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation
- for their work in the field of wireless biomedical
sensors.
May 2008 2nd Place - Nicol Launchpad
Venture Creation Competition [National] -
for "VSM Technologies" business plan.
October 2008 Best Paper: European
Wireless Technology Conference - on
wireless transmitter innovation.
January 2009 1st Place: Enterprize
Canada Entrepreneurial Championship [Central Region]
- for "VSM Technologies" business plan.
February 2009 1st Place: Enterprize
Canada Entrepreneurial Championship [National Competition]
- for "VSM
Technologies " business
plan.
Innovation implementation
Though past
uses of this type of technology have included space
and nuclear experiments, Shamim and Arsalan's creation
could have immediate effects in the world of
medicine and consumer electronics.
Carleton University professor Andy
Adler, the Canada
Research Chair in biomedical engineering, says that
wireless systems could significantly decrease hospital
costs and even extend patient monitoring to the comfort
of their own homes — in turn freeing up much needed
space in hospitals for additional patients.
“Hospitals have a massive
wiring problem,” says Adler. “Every
new operating theatre has more and more units and computers
involved. If you’ve got five people involved
and each person looks at three different things, that
alone is 15 screens involved and all the wires that
go with them."
Nathan Dalgleish, product specialist
with Best Medical Canada Ltd. agrees, adding the change
would benefit the patients as well.
"If a doctor
needs a patient to reposition themselves or move
around, wires limit the amount of motion they can
do,” says Dalgleish. “Anything
you use on a person, if you can make it wireless it
just makes it that much more user friendly.”
"There
are concerns about reliability [and incompatibility
with consumer grade products]," adds Adler, "but
wireless is going to be big."
Aside from the
medical world, Shamim and Arsalan say this technology
has potential to lower power consumption and increase
battery life in anything running a wireless signal;
including:
cellphones, laptops, and radio frequency IDs.
As
a result, there has been a great amount of interest
in the innovation from companies around the world;
some local, and some a little more well-known.
“RIM
Canada contacted us, right now they’re evaluating
our technology,” says
Arsalan. “They’ve got all the papers and some basic information
and hopefully they’ll get back to us soon with a proposal.”
Though the hype surrounding this innovation
has been huge, and the technology shows plenty of promise,
Shamim cautions that people shouldn't jump to any conclusions
over its capabilities.
