Wearable Wireless Body Area Nodes for Remote Physiological Signal Monitoring System

Wearable remote health monitoring systems have gained significant prominence in the recent years due to their growth in technological advances. One form of the Wearable Physiological Monitoring System (WPMS) is the Wearable Body Area Networks (WBAN) used to monitor the health status of the wearer for long durations. The paper discusses a prototype WBAN based wearable physiological monitoring system to monitor physiological parameters such as Electrocardiogram (ECG) and Electroencephalogram (EEG) acquired using a textile electrode, Photoplethysmogram (PPG), Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), Blood Pressure derived from analysis of Pulse Transmit Time (PTT) and body temperature. The WBAN consists of three sensor nodes that are placed strategically to acquire the physiological signals and the sensor nodes communicate to a chest/wrist worn sink node also known as wearable data acquisition hardware. The sink node receives physiological data from the sensor nodes and is transmitted to a remote monitoring station. The remote monitoring station receives the raw data and it is processed to remove noises, such as power line interference, baseline wander and tremor in the signals and the information is extracted and displayed. The WBANs are designed using the ZigBee wireless communication modules to transmit and receive the data. At the remote monitoring station the physiological parameters such as heart rate, pulse rate, systolic, diastolic blood pressure, GSR and body temperature are continuously monitored from the wearer. The data acquired from the wearable monitoring system is statically validated using a qualified medical device on 34 subjects.