A versatile biomedical wireless sensor node with novel drysurface sensors and energy efficient power management

Technology advancements of sensors, low power mixed-signal/RF circuits, and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) made it possible to construct compact and low cost solutions for a wide range of applications such as healthcare, surveillance, building monitoring, sports and fitness, etc. A new emerging generation of WSN is the Body Sensor Network which is suitable to monitor of the human body, mainly for health care applications but also for sports and fitness. Due to the growing interest in this area, novel sensors for monitoring bio-electric signals like ECG, EMG, EOG and EEG are being developed. In this paper we present a low-power designed body sensor networks (BSN) platform for on-body physiological measurements and wireless data communications. The BSN node is capable of hosting high sensitivity electric potential dry surface sensors that can be used in either contact or non-contact mode to measure ECG and EMG signals. The wireless connectivity is provided from a Bluetooth module to be connected to a PC or Smartphone and an 802.15.4 transceiver. Moreover as the platform is designed with low power in mind it incorporates adaptive power modes and an ultra-low power wake up radio to switch off/on the sensors and the radio transceivers in order to save energy. Experimental measurements show the acquisition of the novel sensors and the low power management consumption achievable with the node in different modalities. The power consumption in deep sleep is only 1.8uW. Thus, due to the presence of the novel sensors, the low power consumption and the wireless connectivity, the BSN platform will greatly facilitate the research and development activities for pervasive healthcare, telemedicine, wearable medical devices and other emerging biomedical engineering fields.