INUP IISc Bangalore: Theme Based Proposal
Design of Wireless ECG Sensor for Telecardiac Monitoring and its
FPGA Implementation
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Balwinder Raj, Member IEEE and 2Ramesh Kumar Sunkaria Member IEEE
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Assistant Professor, Department of ICT, ABV-Indian Institute of Information
Technology and Management Gwalior, (ABV-IIITM) Madhya Pardesh-474010, India
{balwinderraj@gmail.com}
2
Assistant Professor, Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Dr. B
R Ambedkar National Institute of Technology Jalandhar, Punjab-144011, India.
Abstract
Wireless ECG sensor design required for pervasive healthcare applications demand new
solutions for continuous and long-term individuals health condition monitoring and harmful
event detection. In the proposed project, design and development of ECG sensor for telecardiac
monitoring is proposed to be carried out. The ECG features will be extracted using selfdeveloped efficient algorithms in real-time. The design will be implemented on FPGA SpartanIV kit towards development of an ECG sensing device. The resulting sensing device is proposed
to have high performance and reliability.
Introduction
Wireless ECG sensor device for cardiac healthcare monitoring are compact and reliable,
so they can be worn by subjects/patients as they moves around. The processing speed of FPGA is
faster and their performance is highly reliable. In this project, it is proposed to implement the
highly efficient ECG sensor device implementation on FPGA for a reliable cardiac health
prognosis. The resulting FPGA based real-time ECG sensor device will be a highly efficient and
low-cost health monitoring device with currently emerging techniques. It will be shown that the
hardware/software implementation makes it possible to use low-cost portable ECG signal
processing FPGA based devices with soft-core microcontroller in systems where a high
processing speed is required.
Definition of the problem
Wireless ECG sensor is used for monitoring cardiac health status of a subject/patient. The
ECG sensor design include, among others, development of wearable, low power and intelligent
devices capable of real-time decision making based on physiological parameter analysis. The
accuracy of heart health estimation is highly helpful in taking timely and appropriate treatment
measures to control the heart disease from further deterioration. The recorded electrocardiograms
(ECGs) are obviously corrupted by power line interference, motion artifacts and other high
frequency noise sources. In the present proposed project work efficient signal processing
technique will be developed to remove these noises as outlined and ECG signal features will be
extracted with high accuracy. A highly efficient computerized ECG disease classifier using
support vector machine (SVM) along with other classifying technique will be designed for
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pinpointing cardiac health in general and disease in particular. This proposed project work will
be implemented with FPGA. This will result into wireless ECG sensing device, which is current
requirement for System on Chip (SOC) design that could be used to store the acquired ECG, to
display the ECG features and to communicate to a PC computer using an USB device. The work
will be implemented using MATLAB/VHDL for ECG signal processing and Xilinx FPGA
implementation.
1. Design and development of a wireless ECG sensor for health features and health
indicator.
2. The novel signal processing technique will be used for signal processing.
3. Design and development of SVM and other classifying technique based efficient
classifier.
4. Development of a wireless ECG sensor device based on FPGA to reduce the complexity
of the conventional medical system.
5. The system will be using these features primarily to identify the abnormal rhythm of
heart beat. The prototype system will be tested in real-time.
6. Modification of an existing monitoring system in terms of compactness, reliability and
flexibility.
7. Our approach for wireless ECG sensor device design is intended to overcome the
limitations of conventional healthcare monitoring system.
8. FPGA implementation and testing.
Research Methodology
The proposed research work during the period of research is expected to yield an optimized
design of wireless ECG sensing device for cardiac healthcare monitoring based on FPGA
implementation to reduce the complexity of the conventional medical system.
The
advancements in technology have opened up new areas in the medical equipment market of
health care industry. Different types of technology, ranging from telecommunications to
software, have improved and created new medical applications such as home monitoring,
radiology and patient information access. Of these applications, portable electrocardiogram
(ECG) equipment falls into the category of telemedicine. A schematic design of the algorithm in
this study for wireless ECG sensing device design is shown in Figure 1. The first stage is design
and analysis of wireless ECG sensing device using software tools such as MATLAB or VHDL,
including different levels of signal processing, feature extraction using software tools,
dimensionality reduction and final net-list generation. The second stage is hardware analysis of
wireless ECG signal on FPGA Spartan-IV kit, which is the main goal of this research project.
The methodology for the proposed work as described below:
1. Development of algorithm to extract the ECG signal for wireless ECG sensing device
parameters.
2. Analysis of wireless ECG sensing device using novel signal processing technique.
3. SVM and other classifying technique analysis for wireless ECG signals.
4. Design and analysis with Matlab/VHDL using Xilinx ISE software and verified using
MODELSIM.
5. Various working modules and all protocols are implemented using Xilinx Spartan-IV
FPGA kit.
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FPGA Implementations
In the present project work it is proposed to develop efficient wireless ECG sensor for a reliable
cardiac healthcare monitoring. The algorithm will involve various novel digital signal processing
techniques on the signal of interest to give a desired end result. The processing of data through
various stages is proposed to be implemented on FPGA circuitry. It is well known that FPGAs
are widely used in the implementation of fast digital systems for retrieval, processing, storage,
and transmission of data. Xilinx, Altera, Lattice, Actel, Quick logic are some of the companies
making FPGAs in the world. Verilog and Very High Speed Integrated Circuit HDL (VHDL) are
hardware description languages to design digital logic using FPGAs and CPLDs. FPGAs provide
optimal device utilization through conservation of board space and system power. The existing
system uses discrete ICs like decoder, latches, tri-state-buffers, UARTs, microcontrollers, analog
to digital converter, level converter etc for monitoring ECG signal for an efficient wireless ECG
sensing device for cardiac healthcare monitoring system. So it is required to have modification in
the system so as to make it compact, flexible and faster responding. In this research work,
wireless ECG sensing device for cardiac healthcare monitoring is proposed to design and
implemented using FPGA Spartan-IV hardware kit.
ECG Sensor
(Specifications)
Extraction of ECG signal health features
and health indicator
Analysis using novel signal processing
technique
Design and development of SVM and
other classifying technique
Dimensionality Optimization for
compactness, reliability and flexibility
FPGA Implementations on Xilinx
Spartan-IV Kit
Testing, Validation
Figure 1: Flowchart for proposed work
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Figure: Conceptual overview of the system
Time schedule of activities giving milestones in a bar diagram
S.No.
1
2
3
4
5
6
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Months →
a) Procurement of EDA tools and Lab Space
arrangement.
b) Understanding and development of ability
to run software and hardware
c) Algorithm development to extract the ECG
signal health features and health indicator
a) Analysis using novel signal processing
technique
b) Wireless ECG sensing device design and
development to reduce the complexity of
the conventional medical system
a) Identify the abnormal rhythm of heart beat.
b) Testing of prototype system in real-time.
a) Design optimization for compactness,
reliability and flexibility
a) FPGA implementation and testing.
b) Model deployment on the web for public
use
a) Development of design benchmark.
b) Consolidation of the outcomes with respect
to objectives.
c) Preparation of final technical report
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End usages of the research outcomes:
It is expected that at the end of planed project the following are the deliverables of the
proposed research:
1. Efficient wireless ECG sensing device.
2. Design of ECG sensing device with novel signal processing techniques.
3. Low power operating portable system for cardiac healthcare monitoring device for high
performance.
4. Fully tested and FPGA implemented wireless ECG system.
5. Training of high quality graduate students in a nationally important bio-medical signal
processing, VLSI design and FPGA implementation.
6. Contribute directly to the graduate education, training of Master and Ph.D. students
7. Research publications in reputed referred journals/conferences.
References:
 Milenkovic, C. Otto, and E. Jovanov, "Wireless Sensor Networks for Personal Health
Monitoring: Issues and an Implementation," Computer Communications, vol. 29, pp.
2521-2533, 2006.
 Boskovic and M. Despotovic, "An Efficient Approach to ECG Signal Transmission via
GPRS," Proc. EUROCON International Conference on Computer as a Tool, Belgrade,
pp. 76-79, 2005.
 Thanapatay, D., Suwansaroj, C. and Thanawattano, C., “ECG beat classification method
for ECG printout with Principle Components Analysis and Support Vector Machines,” In
the proceedings of International Conference on Electronics and Information Engineering
(ICEIE), Bangkok, Thailand, pp. V1-72 - V1-75, August, 2010.
 Gu-Young Jeong, Myoung-Jong Yoon, Kee-Ho Yu and Tae-Kyu Kwon, “Development
of portable ECG measurement device and PC software for automatic ST analysis, In the
proceedings of International Conference on Control Automation and Systems (ICCAS),
December 2010, pp. 1171 – 1174.
 Wang Jie-Sheng, Zhang Yong, Zhang Ping and Sun Shi-Feng, “Research on denoising
algorithm for ECG signals,” 29th Chinese Control Conference (CCC), July 2010, pp.
2936 – 2940.
 Vullings, R., de Vries, B. and Bergmans, J.W.M., “An Adaptive Kalman Filter for ECG
Signal Enhancement,” IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, vol. 58, no.4, pp.
1094 – 1103, April 2011.
 L. Walters, “A Scaleable FIR Filter Implementation using 32-bit Floating-Point Complex
Arithmetic on a FPGA Based Custom Computing Platform”,Proc. Of IEEE Symposium
on FPGAs for Custom Computing Machines, 1998, Ca, USA, PP 333-334, 1998.
 K. C. Chang, “Digital System Design with VHDL and Synthesis: An Integrated
Approach”, Wiley, Paperback
 David J. Farrell, David M. Williams, “Implementation of Digital Filters in Programmable
Logic Devices”, Proc. Of International Conference on Embedded Systems, San
Francisco, Spring, 2001.
 Peter J. Ashenden, “The Designer’s Guide to VHDL”, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers,2nd
Edition,2002.
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