Design and implementation of an ultra low power health monitoring node for wireless body sensor network

The human body consists of many complicated physiological signals such as blood pressure, electrocardiograph (ECG), respiratory rate, electroencephalograph (EEG), arterial oxygen saturation (SpO2), body temperature and so on, which, to some extent, reflects the health conditions of the people. Long term and continuous monitoring of these signals are of much importance for the detection and treatment of many diseases such as heart failure, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, etc. Wireless body sensor network is developed in this context and soon become very popular for its convenience and inexpensiveness. In this paper, we introduced the basic knowledge and techniques for low-power health monitoring nodes design, and then we described the design and implementation of an ultra low power ECG (LPECG) monitoring node for wireless body sensor network. We mainly discussed the hardware and software design of the low-power ECG monitoring node, and then we test the power consumption of the node when it working at different modes and the monitoring function of the node is tested and the results are presented; at last, we get the conclusion and pointed out the future development of the node.