Real-time compressed sensing-based electrocardiogram compression on energy-constrained wireless body sensors

Wireless body sensor networks (WBSN) hold the promise to enable next-generation patient-centric tele-cardiology systems. A WBSN-enabled electrocardiogram (ECG) monitor consists of wearable, miniaturized and wireless sensors able to measure and wirelessly report cardiac signals to a WBSN coordinator, which is responsible for reporting them to the tele-health provider. However, state-of-the-art WBSN-enabled ECG monitors still fall short of the required functionality, miniaturization and energy efficiency. Among others, energy efficiency can be significantly improved through embedded ECG compression, which reduces airtime over energy-hungry wireless links. In this paper, we quantify the potential of the emerging compressed sensing (CS) signal acquisition/compression paradigm for low complexity energy-aware ECG compression on the state-of-the-art Shimmer™ WBSN mote. Interestingly, our results show that CS represents a competitive alternative to state-of-the-art digital wavelet transform (DWT)-based ECG compression solutions in terms of overall energy efficiency and Shimmer™ node lifetime extension.