Power-Saving Encoding Schemes for Wireless ECG Signal Transmissions

Encoding schemes aimed to reduce RF transmissions for wireless ECG systems are discussed. By utilizing the concept that the signal power is much bigger than the noise power in a working ECG system, we have combined differential encoding with a window-base noise-detection scheme to design an encoding method to limit the transmissions down to about 20% of raw data transmissions. The trade-offs for encoding methods are the moderate increase of software complexity due to the need of a simple communication protocol to distinguish different types of data packets. The example of a two-second ECG data of a 23-year old male subject is used to show the high efficiency of our methods.