A Smart Measurement and Stimulation System to Analyze and Promote Non-Nutritive Sucking of Premature Babies

This paper presents a complete system that can be used to measure and to stimulate sucking abilities of premature babies. The system integrates measurement and stimulation capabilities that can be used separately or together. The sensing unit includes mainly a pressure sensor, a conditioning circuit and a microcontroller device. The stimulation unit includes a miniature and low-cost pneumatic pump, an electro-valve, and a conditioning circuit. The microcontroller is shared by both units. The system's software includes a routine that is used to define the waveform parameters of the synthesized pressure signals, a wavelet based routine that is used to process measurement data and a software component to perform fault detection and diagnosis. The system capabilities include self-calibration and self-testing. Throughout the paper several implementation details and experimental results will be presented and discussed.