Application of Bluetooth Low Energy 5 Technology in Wireless 12-Lead ECG Signal Transmission

The paper reports the results of experimental studies on using Bluetooth Low Energy 5 (BLE) technology for wireless, real-time transmission of 12-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) recordings in portable ECG acquisition devices. To conduct the experiments, a dedicated wireless ECG measurement system was developed using the evaluation boards: ADS1298RECGFE-PDK with ADS1298 chip for biomedical signal acquisition and nRF5340DK with nRF5340 System-on-Chip that employs BLE 5. The developed hardware and software enabled research on the practical measurement of the maximum achievable throughput of a wireless BLE-based channel and the determination of the ECG sampling rate for which raw 12-lead ECG data can be transmitted wirelessly without losses under the assumed conditions. The presented solution achieved a BLE throughput of 674 kb/s without performance losses at a distance of up to 18 m.