Development of a totally implantable total artificial heart controller

Using a one chip microcontroller, 87C196 (One chip EPROM), and an erasable and programmable logic device (EPLD), an implantable control system to drive a pendulum type electromechanical total artificial heart was developed. This control system consists of four parts: a main management system, a motor driver with power regulator, a state monitoring system, and a communication portion. The main system has a speed detector, proportional and integral (PI) control, pulse width modulation (PWM) generation, serial communication, and an analog data processor. Two kinds of power system are used, separated by eight photocoupler arrays to improve system stability. When the performance of each compartment was compared with that of the previously used Z80 microprocessor based control system, good correspondence was shown. Logic power consumption was reduced to one third that of the previous controller. Using mock circulation tests, the overall performance of the control system was evaluated.