Abstract

In past years, heart disease has been the leading cause of death in most developed countries. Timely detection of a heart condition is necessary in order to prevent life threatening situations. Even when the problem is not a heart condition, the activity of the heart can supply vital information, which makes its monitoring extremely important. A new approach to patient monitoring was taken recently by introducing wireless sensor networks into medical care. The capability of monitoring multiple patients at once makes such a system ideal for pre-hospital and in-hospital emergency care. The main problems associated with wireless sensor networks are power consumption and scaling. The power consumption is a problem due to the need for increased mobility of such a system, while scaling is of concern because a large number of nodes is desired in order to monitor more patients. This thesis addresses the power and bandwidth problems associated with monitoring patients using wireless networks by introducing another level of signal processing at each node. The goal is to design a digital circuit that would detect any abnormality in the ECG signal and enable the data transmission only if such has occurred. Reducing the amount of data being transmitted reduces the necessary bandwidth for each node and with the introduction of the proposed chip, the power consumption of each node is affected as well.

Library of Congress Subject Headings

Electrocardiography--Data processing; Medical care--Automation; Signal processing; Wireless communication systems; Wireless sensor networks

Publication Date

8-1-2007

Document Type

Thesis

Department, Program, or Center

Computer Engineering (KGCOE)

Advisor

Lukowiak, Marcin

Advisor/Committee Member

Phillips, Daniel

Advisor/Committee Member

Hu, Fei

Comments

Note: imported from RIT’s Digital Media Library running on DSpace to RIT Scholar Works. Physical copy available through RIT's The Wallace Library at: RC683.5.E5 S36 2007

Campus

RIT – Main Campus

Download

Share

COinS