A novel wireless biomedical monitoring system with dedicated FPGA-based ECG processor

A novel portable and wireless biomedical monitoring system featuring on demand wireless data transmission of ECG signals and time-frequency HRV analysis for personal and home healthcare applications is presented in this work. In order to provide comfort and convenience to patients, the device's size, power consumption and portability are of first priority. The ECG processor based on previous hardware design [1] acquires three-channel ECG biomedical raw data through an analog front-end (AFE) circuit, and it measures the time between successive heart beats on lead II as RR intervals for HRV analysis. Functions such as QRS complex peak detection, RR intervals calculation, and time-frequency analysis of HRV have also been developed in hardware. A real-time HRV analysis processor is realized by employing a Lomb periodogram for time-frequency power spectral density (PSD) analysis of the heart rate. The proposed ECG monitoring system has been implemented in Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) and it features high integration density, portability, wireless transmission and low cost.

[1]  Zafer Sahinoglu,et al.  Multi-Stage Real Time Health Monitoring via ZigBee in Smart Homes , 2007, 21st International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications Workshops (AINAW'07).

[2]  S. Borromeo,et al.  A Reconfigurable, Wearable, Wireless ECG System , 2007, 2007 29th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society.

[3]  Ahsan H. Khandoker,et al.  Low cost ECG monitor for developing countries , 2009, 2009 International Conference on Intelligent Sensors, Sensor Networks and Information Processing (ISSNIP).

[4]  Ondrej Krejcar,et al.  Real Time Processing of ECG Signal on Mobile Embedded Monitoring Stations , 2010, 2010 Second International Conference on Computer Engineering and Applications.

[5]  Bonam Kim,et al.  Design and Implementation of a Ubiquitous ECG Monitoring System Using SIP and the Zigbee Network , 2007, Future Generation Communication and Networking (FGCN 2007).

[6]  Dina Simunic,et al.  Wireless ECG monitoring system , 2009, 2009 1st International Conference on Wireless Communication, Vehicular Technology, Information Theory and Aerospace & Electronic Systems Technology.

[7]  Gu-Yeon Wei,et al.  A portable, low-power, wireless two-lead EKG system , 2004, The 26th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society.

[8]  Hsiang-Cheh Huang,et al.  Advanced ECG processor with HRV analysis for real-time portable health monitoring , 2011, 2011 IEEE International Conference on Consumer Electronics -Berlin (ICCE-Berlin).

[9]  Xinghuo Yu,et al.  Real-Time ECG Monitoring System Based on FPGA , 2007, IECON 2007 - 33rd Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society.

[10]  Chung-Han Tsai,et al.  A low-power low-noise CMOS analog front-end IC for portable brain-heart Monitoring applications , 2011, 2011 IEEE/NIH Life Science Systems and Applications Workshop (LiSSA).

[11]  Ju Young Kim,et al.  Ubiquitous healthcare service using Zigbee and mobile phone for elderly patients , 2009, Int. J. Medical Informatics.

[12]  Shao-Yen Tseng,et al.  An EKG system-on-chip for portable time-frequency HRV analysis , 2011, 2011 IEEE International Conference on Consumer Electronics (ICCE).