One important means of reaching the highest possible safety level in automation of life-critical respiratory support devices is redundant design: In this application two identical ESM™-type computer-on-modules are used to control several different types of ventilation devices. Those devices feature patient monitoring for invasive and non-invasive adult, pediatric and infant therapy.

ESM™ Embedded System Modules are complete computers on a plug-on module based on PCI. In this case, each ESM™ module is powered by an MPC5200B running at 384MHz clock frequency. While the memory is already implemented on the ESM™ module, all other I/O connectivity is realized on an application-specific ESM™ carrier board that has been developed by the customer himself. The additional functionality is implemented by means of IP cores in the FPGA which is located on the ESM™ module. These application-specific functions include graphics, binary I/O, pulse width measurement, quadrature decoder, frequency counter, additional Ethernets and UARTs. Two CAN bus interfaces, Fast Ethernet, COM and USB from the MPC5200B are also routed through the FPGA to the ESM™ carrier board.