Wireless Health Monitoring System

Zimu Li, Guodong Feng, Fenghe Liu, Jia Q Dong, Dr. Ridha Kamoua, Dr. Wendy Tang, Member, IEEE
continuously monitor and supervise the patient’s health status
without restricting the patient’s movement. When the patient is
in critical condition, information from the sensors will be sent
Abstract— Rapid advances in wireless communication devices to the network through wireless technology. Doctors will be
and systems had and continue to have a significant impact on the notified that a patient’s health is in critical condition. Doctors
healthcare industry. One important application is to monitor
patient’s health status anytime and anywhere without restricting
will also have the ability to request health status of specific
the patient’s movement as a result of being tied down through patients at anytime of the day.
cables to monitoring equipment. Through the miniaturizations of There is only limited number of doctors in a hospital to serve
sensors and the use of wireless interface to transmit the data a huge population of patients. A sick patient’s health could vary
recorded by the sensors, health care monitoring can be extended
every minute of the day. Therefore it is important to monitor
beyond the hospital confines. This is regarded as a core technology
for deployment of ubiquitous healthcare in home and mobile vital signs continuously without excessive intrusion. The goal
application with the potential of reducing the cost of health care as is to bring the patient and the doctor closer and provide a more
the physician is able to monitor the patient’s progress without the efficient and a better quality service. Wireless technology will
inconvenience and expense of hospitalization. allow patients to move freely around the hospital or at home
The proposed design focuses on the development of a wireless
while still being monitored and cared for.
health monitoring prototype system with the initial emphasis on
measuring the electrical activity of the heart. One application of II. BACKGROUND
such a device would be in the monitoring of the elctrocardiogram
(EKG) activity in sleep apnea patients. Two types of wireless heart A. History
monitors for indoor use and outdoor use will be considered. The
prototype is composed of three main parts: microprocessor, In 1872 Alexander Muirhead attached wires to patient’s wrist
sensor, and radio. The Microprocessor is the central control unit to obtain the heartbeat while pursuing his Doctorate degree in
of the entire system. Sensors are used to measure the patient’s electricity at the St Bartholomew’s Hospital [1]. He used
health indicators and convert that information to electrical data. Lippmann capillary electrometer created by the British
The Radio is used to transmit the data that has been processed by physiologist John Burdon Sanderson for gathering and
the control unit. One of the paramount considerations in the visualizing the data. Later Augustus Waller took this idea and
design is to make the device very compact and portable as well as designed an electrical device that was able to record the
to minimize power consumption. Tradeoffs between power and
communication range need to be considered carefully. The
heartbeat in real time by connecting a Lippmann capillary
MSP430 microprocessor from Texas Instruments is selected. It is electrometer to a projector. The major breakthrough came when
built around a 16-bit CPU and designed for low cost, and Willem Einthoven invented the string galvanometer which was
specifically, low power embedded applications. Similarly, a low more accurate in measuring the heartbeat [2]. Einthoven
power radio transceiver will be selected and power management assigned letters P,Q, R, S, and T to the different projections and
features will be included. described the electrocardiographic features of different
cardiovascular disorders [3]. The principles of Willem
Einthoven are still in use today but with more advanced
Index Terms—Sensors, wireless, health care monitoring. technology for detecting the electrocardiograph.
B. Survey
I. INTRODUCTION Heartbeat rate can provide a lot of physiological and

T he goal of this project is to design a wireless health pathological information and is an important health indicator.
monitoring system that can monitor individual vital signs Nowadays, heart diseases have already become one of the most
and send them through a wireless network to a hospital or a common and deadly diseases. The diagnostic of heart diseases
health care provider. The system will consist of three parts, the has always been considered a very important issue in the
sensor, microprocessor, and radio. The sensors are placed onto medical community worldwide. Gathering heart beat
a patient’s chest and powered by a small battery. They will information in real time provides doctors with the necessary
tool to monitor and treat patients.
We are grateful for the advice received by a panel of professional engineering
and business mentors. The panel is supported by National Science Foundation
under Grant No. CNS 0829656. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or
recommendations expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not C. Project Planning
necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
The authors are with the Electrical and Computer Engineering at Stony
Our design is targeted for mobile as well as home usage. The
Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11794-2350 ([email protected]). system will be designed based on the existing medical

978-1-4244-5550-8/10/$26.00 ©2010
Authorized licensed use limited to: PES IEEE
University Bengaluru. Downloaded on September 30,2024 at 10:19:24 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
knowledge and methods for measuring the electrocardiograph The size of the sensor nodes is crucial in our design. Since the
(ECG). In our design, sensors will be placed on the patient to sensors are designed for patients to wear while pursuing normal
record ECG activity. We will need to research how doctors use daily activities, the sensor nodes need to be as small and light
ECG data to identify if a patient is in normal or critical weight as possible. This is important because sometimes a
condition. Once the monitoring system determines that a patient has to wear multiple sensor nodes for multiple vital sign
patient is in critical or abnormal state, recorded data is monitoring and larger size sensor nodes will cause discomfort
automatically transmitted to doctors for immediate attention. A to the wearer.
major component of our design is the microcontroller which
needs to be compact, fast, and consumes little power. The effective operation range for a wireless sensor system is
also every important. A small operation range in a relative large
application area will require multiple sensor systems with
D. Goals and Impact of Project on Society/Environment
higher cost and complexity. In order to make the operation
A large number of heart monitoring systems are available range wider, a more powerful transceiver should be considered.
in the market, however most of these systems tend to be large in Yet a more powerful transceiver implies more power
size and are not convenient to use on a regular basis. Typically, consumption, which is not desirable for a battery powered
patients need to go to a hospital or medical office to perform the wireless sensor system as is the case in our application. In order
test and then wait for the results to be sent to the doctor. In to increase the operation range, an ad-hoc network seems to be
addition to being inconvenient, this is an inefficient use of more favorable. Ad-hoc network sends data from node to node.
human resources. The disadvantages of previous heart monitors However, this could cause a sensor node to be transmitting
have led us to consider a new system that can monitor heart rate more frequently which will decrease battery life. In addition,
without limitation due to time or location of the patient. This ad-hoc network is more complex than direct connection. As a
system should be able to record and send the heart beat rate data proof of concept, we will first implement a direct connection
to doctors either upon request or when an abnormal condition is between the sensor node and the host.
detected. This is particularly convenient for elderly and
disabled patients who have difficulty in traveling to see their B. Initial Design
doctors. Instead of going to the hospital, the proposed wireless Our initial ECG wireless sensor network will consist of two
monitor will provide doctors with the ability to remotely parts: sensor nodes and host. The sensor node consists of an
monitor and diagnose patients while pursuing normal daily ECG sensor, a microcontroller (MCU) and a wireless
activities. transceiver. The processing server (host) consists of a wireless
transceiver, a MCU and a USART connector which connects to
The project could also be applied to battlefield health the processing server (PC). The logic diagram of our
monitoring. Military doctors usually treat battlefield casualties conceptive system is shown below:
immediately if there is no medical station nearby. Using
wireless vital sign sensor network, the doctor could set up a
local wireless network and receive the vital signs of many
casualties at the same time, in order to determine which patient
MCU Transcei
needs treatment the most. ECG Sensor I S
/ P ver

III. SYSTEM DESIGN Fig 1: Sensor Node Block Diagram

A. Design Constraints
MCU
As a first step, we decided to monitor one vital sign that U
demonstrates the functionality of the whole system. The vital Transc S S Server
sign to be monitored is the heart beat also known as eiver P A
electrocardiograph (ECG). ECG is the measurement of electric I R
potential throughout the body during heart wall contraction.
The electric currents spread through the body and create
different potentials at different points which can be sensed by Fig 2: Processing Unit (Host) Block Diagram
electrodes (ECG nodes) [4].
The microcontroller (MCU) is the heart of our design. The
ECG records the electrical activity of the heart over time with software will be embedded in this part. The performance of the
great detail. It is every useful in detection of heart problems. MCU has a strong impact on the performance of the whole
Typical ECGs consist of 12-leads or 15-leads and the resulting system. The peripherals of MCU determine what other
measurement points provide rich information for doctors to components we can add to the system. A suitable MCU for this
diagnose diseases. In our application, three leads should be particular design should meet the following requirements:
sufficient, since our system is designed to relay critical
information and for portable usage. • Low power consumption
• Supply Voltage less than 3.5 V

Authorized licensed use limited to: PES University Bengaluru. Downloaded on September 30,2024 at 10:19:24 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 • Minimum frequency of 1MHz member of the team is assigned a subtask. The progress of the
• On-chip Analog to Digital Converter group is monitored by having group meetings every week. In
the meeting, group members report the information and
• 2 K RAM Minimum
knowledge that they have acquired in order to propose better
ideas and find solutions to major technical difficulties. The
There are a variety of microcontroller products in the
organizer of the meeting rotates among group members. In this
market that we can choose from. Our initial consideration is to
way, not only one person is elected for the responsibility of
use MICAz 2.4 GHz as our core component for our system. It
gathering and analyzing the information during the meeting,
combines a MCU, transceiver and some other features, which
but also everyone in the group is guaranteed to keep up with the
will make our design much easier. All we have to do is to
progress of the project. After each meeting, the progress is
connect sensors to the 51-pin expansion connector and then
reported to and discussed with the faculty advisor.
program the node [5]. Unfortunately, the cost of MICAz system
is rather high. Other MCUs we considered are the TI MSP 430
family and the Atmel AVR family. The MSP430 families are B. Professional Issues
ultra-low power microcontrollers and designed for battery The effectiveness of the wireless sensor monitoring system
powered system. The architecture combined five low power
depends on the reliability of the wireless network. Therefore, it
modes to achieve extended battery life in portable measurement
applications. The device features a powerful 16-bit RISC CPU, is important to guarantee that the wireless connection is not
16-bit registers, and constant generators that attribute to interrupted. Because of the small size of our design, limited
maximum code efficiency [6]. power is used to transmit the signal with wireless sensor.
Considering these limitations, a carefully designed network is
C. Final Design very critical.
After careful consideration and research on the subject, we
The sensor form factor needs to be made more comfortable on
have selected the following components as shown in figure 3
a person’s skin, so that patients will not feel discomfort wearing
and 4.
it. Uncomfortable feeling may cause the patient to have
different reactions in motion, which may cause separation
MSP430 between the sensor and the human body. As long as the monitor
FIR (ADC nRF240
I S is attached to the skin with three ECG leads, a design that is
Filters & Signal 1A
(INA333
/
processing) P more comfortable will correctly monitor the patient’s helath
O status.
& I
OPA336)
Wireless transmission of patient’s vital data makes security a
very important aspect of the design. Therefore, constructing a
Fig.3: Block diagram of sensor node
network which keeps the patients’ health information safe from
unauthorized recipients is a major goal.

MSP430 V. CONCLUSION
U
nRF240 S (Signal A Serve In the long term, more sensors could be added so that the
P processing) CP2
1A R
102 r wireless monitoring system can be used by a wide segment of
I T the society. As the technology improves, it is expected that the
size of the health monitoring system will become much smaller,
Fig 4: Block diagram of receiving node while the function would become more powerful. Nearly
everyone’s health information could be well monitored
The ECG monitoring system consists of EGC sensors, low continuously. In the future, sensor data transmission may most
noise instrumentation amplifiers, an MCU, and a transceiver. likely depend on 4G network in order to handle the mass traffic
The amplifier takes out unwanted noises that are coupled into and increase speed of the transmission. It is hoped that such a
the signal and amplifies the filtered signal. The MCU receives monitor would bring a better service to patients and more
the analog signal and converts it into digital signal with 10-bit readily information to doctors. Patients’ health status can be
resolution and then sends the processed signal to the remotely checked by doctors wich will allow them to serve a
transceiver. The receiving node receives the data and transfers greater number of patients. Sick patients can leave the hospital
it to a PC via a USB connection for further analysis. more relaxed knowing that even when they are outside of
hospital they are still being monitored by a medical
professional.
IV. DISCUSSION
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
A. Mutli-Disciplinary Experience The authors acknowledge the valuable help and assistance
Our senior design team consists of four electrical engineering provided by Professor Ridha Kamoua and Professor Wendy
students. In order to accomplish the project efficiently, each Tang from Stony Brook University.

Authorized licensed use limited to: PES University Bengaluru. Downloaded on September 30,2024 at 10:19:24 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 REFERENCES
[1] MedicalMachinesOnline.com, “Ecg History,” 12 Dec. 2009,
http://www.medicalmachinesonline.com/articles/ecg-history.html
[2] The Nobel Foundation, “Willem Einthoven,” 12 Dec. 2009,
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1924/einthoven-bi
o.html
[3] WebMD Inc, “Electrocardiogram (ECG),” 12 Dec. 2009,
http://www.emedicinehealth.com/electrocardiogram_ecg/article_em.htm
l
[4] Texas Instrument Corportaion, “Medical Applications Guide,” 12 Dec.
2009, http://focus.ti.com/lit/sg/slyb108d/slyb108d.pdf.
[5] CrossBow Technology, Inc. “MICAz WIRELESS MEASUREMENT
SYSTEM,” 12 Dec. 2009,
http://www.xbow.com/Products/Product_pdf_files/Wireless_pdf/MICAz
_Datasheet.pdf
[6] Texas Instruments Corporation, “MSP430x23x, MSP430x24x(1),
MSP430x2410 MIXED SIGNAL MICROCONTROLLER,” 12 Dec.
2009, http://focus.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/msp430f235.pdf

ZiMu Li is currently working on his B.E degree in electrical engineering at

Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY and expected to graduate in May
2010.

Guodong Feng is currently working on his B.E degree in electrical engineering

at Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY and expected to graduate in May
2010.

Fenghe Liu is currently working on his B.E degree in electrical engineering at

Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY and expected to graduate in May
2010.

Jia Q Dong is currently working on his B.E degree in electrical engineering at

Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY and expected to graduate in May
2010.

Authorized licensed use limited to: PES University Bengaluru. Downloaded on September 30,2024 at 10:19:24 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.