Analysis of energy consumption for wearable ECG devices

Wearable health monitoring systems (WHMS) have received much attention for the last decade due to increasing healthcare costs and the aging world population. Although advances in sensors, embedded systems, wireless communication and intelligent information technologies has brought us tiny wearable ECG devices and efficient algorithms to continuously monitor and analyze ECG signals, energy consumption is a critical concern for practical usage. In this study, we examine three possible models of data transmissions - transmitting all data in real time (type 1), transmitting all data in batch periodically (type 2), or only transmitting the detected events (type 3), in which the third model is our proposed method. A simulated environment and a generic energy consumption model are developed to examine the influence of different strategies and Ventricular Fibrillation (VF) detection methods on energy consumption.