It’s that time of year, friends. A time to celebrate the new year, new customers, new breakthroughs, and the newest edition of the mammoth CES technology event, bringing the world’s leading innovators together again in Las Vegas.
CES brings new opportunities to discover new technologies with real transformative power. It’s the perfect place to unveil exciting new capabilities.
At CES 2025, SPARK will unveil some exciting capabilities of our own.
A NEW MARKET
To date, SPARK’s been known mainly for our prowess in audio, gaming and IoT applications, and CES attendees can look forward to seeing our very latest advancements in these domains. For the full itinerary of SPARK ultra-wideband (UWB) wireless connectivity demonstrations planned for CES 2025, refer here.
So what’s new with SPARK?
For the first time ever, SPARK Microsystems will provide public previews of our UWB technology for medical applications – medical implant devices, specifically. SPARK is at the outset of initiatives designed to bring the many advantages we deliver for audio, gaming and IoT onward to the medical domain where SPARK UWB shows clear potential to provide critically valuable benefits in healthcare.
To visualize the benefits SPARK is poised to bring to medical implants and mobile diagnostic, imaging and monitoring devices, consider the advantages SPARK UWB already provides today in key performance areas:
Data throughput – In medical applications, data throughput limitations can degrade the resolution of medical images and monitored vital signs. For mobile wireless medical devices historically limited by low throughput delivery, SPARK UWB can open these data pipelines.
How big an issue is wireless data transfer for tomorrow’s medical technologies? Neuralink recently issued a public challenge to solicit help to solve what’s been called a “seemingly impossible problem.” The root problem, as described by Canada’s CBC: “Turning brain signals into computer inputs means transmitting a lot of data very quickly – 200 times more brain data per second than [the Neuralink implant] can currently wirelessly transmit.”
That’s a lot of data! But no problem is impossible if you approach it the right way.
Latency – Medical monitoring devices – blood pressure monitors, cardiac rhythm monitors, continuous glucose monitors and many more – are designed to provide critical, real-time health data feedback. Immediate analysis and responsiveness enable improved medical outcomes, and low-latency data transmission is therefore a must.
SPARK UWB’s ultra-low latency outperforms legacy wireless platforms – Wi-Fi and Bluetooth – by a significant margin. This advantage can be a major asset for the next generation of wireless medical monitors and devices, both traditional and implantable.
Power efficiency – Medical device uptime is essential for administering care 24×7, posing an obvious challenge for mobile medical devices requiring periodic battery charges and changes that take them offline.
Here again, SPARK UWB outperforms legacy wireless platforms by a wide margin, with extremely low power consumption that can greatly extend the uptime for battery-operated medical devices. For implantable devices designed to be powered by external energy harvesters, SPARK’s extremely low power profile makes it an ideal complement between harvester and RF transceiver.
Interference Robustness – The congestion and signal interference that can plague narrowband 2.4 GHz WiFi and Bluetooth-based medical devices introduces reliability concerns in environments that can least afford them, whether mobile in the healthcare facility or used in the field.
Wireless medical devices operating at 2.4 GHz compete for signal paths in a tiny slice of frequency band that’s already overcrowded with a wide variety of Wi-Fi devices. SPARK UWB is unconfined by these narrowband interference limitations.
SEE YOU AT CES!
The performance profile enabled with SPARK UWB far surpasses the capabilities of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for a wide range of wireless medical applications, and medical device makers have taken notice. We look forward to sharing updates with you as we go!
To preview the innovation that SPARK brings to medical devices – and audio, gaming, IoT and more! – be sure to visit with us at CES 2025. Click here for all the details.
