A novel hardware implementation for joint heart rate, respiration rate, and gait analysis applied to body area networks

Continuous and remote monitoring of vital health-related and physical activity signs of a patient is one of the most important technology-oriented applications to monitor the health-care of ill individuals. In this paper, an innovative framework for a wireless Body Area Network (BAN) system, based on the IEEE 802.15.6 standard, with three types of sensors is proposed and implemented. These include Electrocardiogram (ECG), Force Sensitive Resistor (FSR) and Gyroscope. The proposed design is a novel implementation of an embedded system for the real-time processing and analyzing of the ECG signal, gait phases, and detection of the respiration rate from the ECG signal, by means of small applicable sensors and wireless data communication. Gait analysis is essential for the precise ECG and respiration analysis according to the body posture. A new comprehensive high-speed six-state design is utilized to cover all walking habits. Moreover, the collected data is sent to an external device for further monitoring. The proposed framework is optimized for hardware implementation and targeted for low power applications. The optimized joint implementation of these health-related sensors makes the proposed design distinct from the previous work.