An ultra-wearable, wireless, low power ECG monitoring system

Abstract

Wearable electrocardiograph (ECG) monitoring systems today use electrodes that require skin preparation in advance, and require pastes or gels to make electrical contact to the skin. Moreover, they are not suitable for subjects at high levels of activity due to high noise spikes that can appear in the data. To address these problems, a new class of miniature, ultra low noise, capacitive sensor that does not require direct contact to the skin, and has comparable performance to gold standard ECG electrodes, has been developed. This paper presents a description and evaluation of a wireless version of a system based on these innovative ECG sensors. We use a wearable and ultra low power wireless sensor node called Eco. Experimental results show that the wireless interface will add minimal size and weight to the system while providing reliable, untethered operation. © 2006 IEEE.