Wearable low power dry surface wireless sensor node for healthcare monitoring application

Nowadays, the technology advancements of sensors, low power mixed-signal/RF circuits, wireless communication and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have enabled the design of compact, low power, high performance and low cost solutions for a wide range of applications, surveillance, building monitoring, sports/fitness, and of particular interesting are applications for health care. Novel sensors for human biomedical signal together with wireless connectivity and low power solutions are creating new opportunities for wearable devices which allow continuous monitoring together with freedom of movement of the users. This paper presents a low-power wearable sensor networks platform for on-body physiological measurements and wireless data communications. The platform hosts novel high sensitivity electric potential dry surface sensors that can be used in either contact or non-contact mode to measure ECG and EMG signals. Heart rate and respiration rate is performed runtime directly on the node. This approach reduces the amount of data than need to be transmitted, from raw measurement to analyzed data. In doing so the duty cycle of the radio has been reduced and the power consumption of the node optimized. Experimental measurements show the acquisition and processing of data from sensors and the low power consumption achieved with the node in different modalities.