A Consolidated Review on Embedded Micro-Controllers for Pace Maker Applications

This review paper is based on the real world applications of various microcontrollers in the field of pacemakers. The study conducted is based on various factors such as cost, power consumption, power saving, reliability, efficiency etc. These features differentiate each microcontroller from the other. The goal of this study is to study each microcontroller that are being employed in the field of pacemakers and based on the observations; we can find the best alternative to the presently used microcontrollers. That means, finding a microcontroller which will function as a close substitute to the presently used microcontroller. The microcontrollers which showed similar characteristics to the ones presently being used are suggested to be used for serving the purpose of real time embedded pacemakers and related applications. The various microcontrollers that were studied included PIC (10F,12F,18F) series, MegaAVR(ATMEGA 32, ATMEGA 328P) series, Freescale RS08 Family & TI MSP4300XX series of microcontrollers. By studying their diverse characteristics such as program and data memory, clock cycles, memory, data retention rate, peripherals, I/O features etc., various other microcontrollers were searched for which showed more or less the same characteristics as the above listed ones had. Such similar microcontrollers are hence suggested to be used in the pacemaker and other related application. Suggested microcontrollers include Intel 87C52, PIC (10F, 12F, 16F87x, 18Fxx2) series, FRDM-KL 25Z, Freescale RS08 Family, TI MSP 430XX series of microcontrollers.