Passive RFID tag based heart rate monitoring from an ECG signal

In this paper, we propose a monitoring system that employs a passive RFID tag to transmit heart rate using an ECG signal as its source. This system operates without a battery and has been constructed with easily available commercial components. Here, an RFID tag is used as an on-off keying device, wherein it is normally transmitting, but turns off every time a heart beat is detected. Heart beats ranging from 30BPM through 300BPM are successfully measured using our device. It is shown that the system is capable of providing accurate heart rate measurements up to a distance of ten feet with a standard deviation of less than one beat per minute without a local power source. The proposed system is also found to be resilient in the presence of an additional RFID tag.