Transmission of ECG data with the patch-type ECG sensor system using Bluetooth Low Energy

Electronic wireless sensors could help to reduce medical costs by using smart devices while patients stay at home. For over a decade, the demand for a new low power wireless standard has been growing worldwide for various commercial applications, such as home and building automation, health, sports and fitness, medical, sensor networking, and even the automotive field. Electronic wireless sensors are connected to smart devices of patients using wireless connectivity systems, such as Bluetooth which is classified into two main technologies: classic-Bluetooth and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). BLE is an emerging low-power wireless technology that is expected to be used to communicate with electronic wireless sensors in the medical field. Devices using BLE wireless technology are expected to consume a fraction of the power of classic-Bluetooth enabled products for Bluetooth communication. In many cases, products will be able to operate for more than a year on a coin cell battery without recharging. That will allow sensors such as thermometers to operate continuously, communicating intermittently with other devices such as smart devices. This may increase the concerns for privacy, because remote, low- power, continuously on sensors would be present in devices with BLE. This paper reports the results of a transmission experiment with stream data using BLE, although BLE is inefficient for transferring large quantities of data. The goal of this paper is to introduce BLE wireless technology and to report results obtained when medical stream data was transmitted using BLE.