All optical health monitoring system: An experimental study on visible light communication in biomedical signal transmission

Abstract

In the biomedical signal analysis and transmission, procreation of radio frequency communication technology is recurrently perplexed by electromagnetic interference. This effect can be eliminated by using visible light as a medium of transmission. In this work, Light Fidelity (Li-Fi) transmitter and receiver sections have been designed using white light emitting diode (LED) and photodiode, respectively. For demonstration, we transmitted electrocardiogram signal from Li-Fi transmitter to receiver and the performance has been analysed for various transmission distances. Further enhancement of this work has been proposed as an all-optical health monitoring system that is suitable for hospital environment. In hospitals, VLC is the efficient wireless data communication technology in health monitoring. VLC ensures secured, faster way of communication and use of unlicensed visible spectrum. This enhanced scheme uses biomedical sensors that detect specific biological, chemical, or physical changes that occur in a patient’s body. Biological data are transmitted by an array of LEDs. Biomedical signal processing in both transmitter and receiver sections is performed by Arduino unit. The proposed research work focuses on developing a high-speed eco-friendly local area communication network with low-cost, off-the-shelf components for interconnecting electronic devices within hospital environment.