A portable 12-lead ECG wireless medical system for continuous cardiac-activity monitoring

This paper presents a 12-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) wireless medical system (WMS) aimed to provide continuous patient monitoring. The WMS consists of three sections: end device (ED), base station (BS) and graphical user interface (GUI). The ED and BS communicate through an RF link that operates in the industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) band at 2.45 GHz. The ED is based on commercially-available ultra-low power integrated circuits, including an 8 channel analog front-end (AFE) intended for biopotential monitoring, a microcontroller unit and an ISM radio transceiver. Details on the 12-lead ECG WMS operation including the low-power oriented control algorithm of the ED and the detection algorithm embedded in the GUI are presented. Measurements of the WMS using a 10 electrode ECG signal generator show successful communication up to 35m line of sight. The ED average current consumption is 33mA (including RF transmission) in continuous operation. This allows the ED to operate up to 88 hours.