Real-Time Signal Processing for Wearable Electrocardiogram Device

Healthcare

Wearable

Android app development

Firmware development

BLE

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About

Noise can be harmful. Exposure to noise increases stress levels which leads to raised heart rate and blood pressure. The University of East London had been conducting a study that examined how exposure to noise may adversely affect the cardiovascular systems of children and adults.

To carry out their research, the Research Center built a portable electrocardiogram (ECG) device for the participants in the experiment. This device was designed to record heart rate and individual noise levels. With these records, researchers could analyze how different noise levels affect heart rates and heart rate variability (HRV).

Solution

Integra Sources provided firmware development so the ECG device could perform its function: record the data from all its sensors and send this data to mobile phones via Bluetooth where it is displayed in real time. We also provided Android mobile application development for our client.

"Integra's team helped us clarify our requirements and change systems architecture to achieve the final goal. I'd say that the flexibility and enthusiasm of both engineering and management teams throughout the whole project were some of the things we value most in our collaboration."

Dr. Sam Wass,
University of East London

Technologies Used

We used nRF51 with BLE 4.0 support and Cortex-M0 core as MCU in this project.

FreeRTOS was used for firmware development.

The firmware was implemented using C/C++.

Microsoft Visual Studio with Visual GDB plugin was used for firmware implementation.

The android application was implemented in the Android Studio using Java language.

The device has a microphone, ECG, accelerometer, and thermometer sensors.

Results

With the wearable ECG device and a user-friendly mobile app, it became possible for the scientists to perform their research and investigate the effects of noise exposure on children and adults’ blood pressure and heart health.

Make some noise

Real-time data transfer speed

2KB/sec

Continuous data transfer

8-12 hours/w

Data loss

< 0,001%

Make some noise