Communication Protocol for Intelligent Sensors and Actuators of a Future Dialysis Machine

Sammanfattning: The thesis is done for the company Gambro which manufactures dialysis products worldwide. The idea of this thesis is to investigate weaknesses of the communication protocol which is used in one of the Gambro dialysis machines, Prismaflex and thereby investigate opportunities to improve the system by using other protocols. The thesis is divided into three major parts. They are the study of Prismaflex, the study of several existing protocols and the recommendation of testing environment, so called migration steps. All studies and recommendation in this thesis are done on theoretical perspective. The conclusion of the study is that FlexRay is the most interesting protocol to study and would be most appropriate for the future dialysis machine. The thesis also resulted in a number of proposed analysis and test inclusive components and system structure analysis, unit test, system test, performance test and cost analysis which provides possible instructions of tests for the next study of a future dialysis machine.