Low-Power Body Sensor Network for Wireless ECG Based on Relaying of Creeping Waves at 2.4GHz

A wireless communication platform for ECG operating in the unlicensed 2.4-2.4835 GHz band is proposed and analyzed. The platform uses relaying of creeping waves to drastically reduce sensor transmission power while maintaining reliable performance. A point to point link budget is designed based on the creeping wave component of the propagating signal. The link budget is then integrated into a body sensor network design. System management details are presented and discussed. Performance metrics including scalability of the system and network lifetime are evaluated. The proposed design is shown to achieve a dramatic 1.5 × 10⁵ increase in battery life for mobile scenarios compared to a reference system without relaying. In addition, it is shown that the design may scale to support applications that demand higher data rates than ECG.