Speaker

Location

Engineering III Room 2430

Date & Time

July 24, 2009
Refreshments start at 10:30 AM, Lecture begins 11:00AM

Abstract

The last two decades have witnessed the birth of revolutionary technologies in data communications including wireless technologies, System on Chip (SoC), Multi Processor SoC (MPSoC), Network on Chip (NoC), and more. At the same time we have witnessed that performance does not always keep pace with expectations in many services like multimedia services and biomedical applications. In the medical field, from a statistical viewpoint, the biggest diseases in number of deaths are heart diseases, namely Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) and Stroke. The application with the largest market for CVD is the electrocardiogram (ECG/EKG) analysis. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) report in 2003, 29.2% of global deaths are due to CVD and Stroke, half of which could be prevented if there was proper monitoring. We find in the new advance in microelectronics- especially MPSoC- a chance of a solution for such a big problem. We look at the communication technologies, wireless networks, and MPSoC and realize that many projects can be founded, and they may affect people's lives positively, as for example, curing people more rapidly, as well as homecare of such large scale diseases.

These projects have a medical impact as well as economic and social impacts. The intention is to use performance analysis of interconnected microelectronic systems and combine it with MPSoC technologies in order to evolve to new systems on chip that may make a difference. Technically, we aim at rendering more computations in less time, on a chip with smaller volume, and with less expense. The performance demand and the vision of having a market success, i.e. contributing to lower healthcare costs, pose many challenges on the hardware/software co-design to meet these goals. This calls upon the development of new integrated circuits featuring increased energy efficiency while providing higher computation capabilities, i.e. better performance. The biomedical application of ECG analysis is an ideal target for an application-specific SoC implementation. However, new 12-lead ECG analyses algorithms are needed to meet the aforementioned goals. We present two novel algorithms for ECG analysis that fit such modern technologies from the medical and IT sides, namely the Autocorrelation-Function (ACF) based algorithm and the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) based algorithm.

We explore the design space by analyzing different hardware and software architectures. Consequently, we present three interconnect architectures (Single Bus, Full Crossbar, and Partial Crossbar) and compare them with existing solutions. The critical input and design points are discussed. We also show how our performance analysis methods can be applied to such a field of SoC design and with a specific purpose application in order to converge to a solution that is acceptable from a performance viewpoint, meets the real-time demands, and can be implemented with the present technologies.

Biography

Dr. Iyad Al Khatib is the Chief Technology Officer of Solidux Telecom AB, a Telephony company, headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden. Iyad is also the R&D adviser at Sting Networks AB, a company that delivers Telephony and data technology services to Healthcare and medical centers in Sweden. Iyad is also the General Adviser for business development in the EMEA and North American regions for the British company Unified Networks Ltd., whose core business is in infrastructure networks. He was the CEO and Founder of iITC, a Swedish IT company for innovation in IT and Biomedical Engineering, headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden.

He has helped many companies to startup in Sweden and to expand to the EMEA region. He is the project leader for the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) project entitled “Young Scientists in Communications and Networking Technologies,” in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region. Iyad holds patents in the field of ICT, and he has many patent applications. Iyad is also a member of the Swedish Union of Inventors and a member of the Young Inventors International (YII) Association. He was nominated to the MIT Technology Review Top 100 Innovators under 35. The main fields that Iyad Al Khatib has been working with are: Information and Communication Technology-ICT (microelectronics, computer and communications), Healthcare Information Technology (HIT), biomedical engineering, and Business.

He has papers and publications in these fields. Iyad received his Ph.D. in Multicore Systems for Medical Applications from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden. He has a Licentiate of Technology (a Swedish degree between the Master and Ph.D. degrees) in Networking and Wireless Communications from KTH. He received his Master of Engineering (M.E.) from the American University of Beirut (AUB) majoring in Biomedical Engineering within the field of Computer and Communications Engineering (CCE). He received his Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.) in CCE from the AUB also. Iyad’s current research interests include: Healthcare Information Technology (HIT), wireless communications, networking, biomedical networks, Network on Chip (NoC), and multiprocessor chip design for medical purposes, some of which have been published in international journal and conference papers. Currently, Iyad is working on building a worldwide consortium for ICT in Healthcare, food (and water) safety, and environment.