Abstract: Ubiquitous vital signs sensing using wireless medical sensors are promising alternatives to conventional, in-hospital healthcare systems. In this work, a wearable ECG sensor is proposed. This sensor system combined an appropriate wireless protocol for data communication with capacitive ECG signal sensing and processing. The entire system has small size, is thin, and has low power consumption compared to recent ECG monitoring systems. In addition, appropriate signal conditioning and processing were implemented to remove motion artifacts. The acquired ECG signals are comparable to ones obtained using conventional glued-on electrodes, and are easily read and interpreted by a cardiologist. Heart rate assessment, as well as heart rate variability parameters are computed in real time directly on the sensor, thus only a few parameters are sent via wireless communication for power saving. Hardware and software methods for heart beat detection and variability calculation are described and preliminary tests for the evaluation of the sensor are presented.

Keywords: ECG signals, Heart rate assessment, MEMS technology.