Low-Power Unobtrusive ECG Sensor System for Wireless Power Transfer

Electrocardiogram (ECG) is one of the most widely used physiological signal that provides fundamental health information. Conventional ECG uses gel-type ECG electrodes, however, the gel-type ECG electrode is inconvenient for long-term or daily-life ECG monitoring. Capacitive ECG sensor was implemented to overcome the shortcoming of gel-type ECG electrodes. The wireless power transfer (WPT) technology can improve ubiquitous healthcare, but the power consumption is an important factor of the system based on WPT. Previous study did not consider the power consumption of the system. In this study, we implemented a low-power capacitive ECG monitoring system. The supply power of the system was 5V, and Bluetooth low energy (BLE) module was applied to decrease the power consumption in wireless data transmission. The total power consumption of the system was 16.4 mW.