Remote system for patient monitoring using Bluetooth™

The aim of this study is to design and develop a low-power wireless A/D-converter that should be easy to integrate with other technologies or infrastructures at a low cost. This transmitting unit should be able to replace many of the signal wires between biomedical sensors connecting the patient and the sampling unit or supervision equipment. The model of today is an embedded hardware solution with two processors (FPGA and Bluetooth). A twelve bit ADC with a 1 kHz-sampling rate then converts an analogue signal that simulates an ECG-signal with typical frequencies. The communication between the ADC and Bluetooth™ is serial and controlled by the FPGA. The remote PC runs a simple software that controls the Bluetooth™ and processes the received data. The results indicate that it is possible to continuously transmit an ECG-signal without losing data.