A wireless ECG acquisition and classification system for body sensor networks

This paper demonstrates a wireless ECG acquisition and classification system with a bio-signal processor (BSP), a super regenerative transceiver, and a digital signal processor (DSP). The BSP, which is implemented with low complexity architecture, includes only a low noise amplifier with chopping techniques and a high-pass sigma-delta modulator (HPSDM). The super-regenerative on-off keying (OOK) transceiver is applied for the low power, short range transmission and low date rate wireless communication. For the signal processing and analyzing, the DSP circuit is adopted in the receiver. The whole system is implemented in a TSMC 0.18 µm 1P6M CMOS process under the supply voltage of 1.2 V. In the near body node, the power consumption including a BSP and a transmitter is 587 µW only. With two PR44 zinc-air batteries of 605 mAh, the near body node circuit can be operated about 100 days. In the receiving node, the power consumption with a receiver and a DSP is 926 µW.