Abstract:
The vast majority of today's digital designs utilize custom ASICs (Application-Specific Integrated Circuits) or gate arrays. In general, ASICs offer the lowest possible device power consumption for implementing a given function. Each year the number of custom ASICs designed increases, while the number of parts required for each design decreases. This is due in part to the increasing use of FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) and their ability to provide a lower cost ASIC-based alternative for limited production designs. This paper presents a VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) design and simulation of a custom ASIC incorporating two serial bus communication protocols, CAN^TM (Controller Area Network) and 1 - Wire®, and is targeted towards wearable medical technology and devices as well as advanced vehicular technologies. In designing a custom communications interface module, a number of technical and potentially challenging problems had to be addressed and overcome. These include but are not limited to: combining a multimaster and a single-master protocol, event-triggered and time-triggered control paradigms, differential communication speeds, and messages by addressing and messages by IDs. By combining the low-cost and ease of CAN^TM -enabling almost any device with the variety of 1 - Wire® devices currently in-production, the combinations of sensor networks is only limited by the creativity of the system designer. Given the limited FPGA resources utilized by the design presented in this manuscript, a low-cost ASIC could handle the data demands and provide the communications interface of most any application for either market.
