An Application-Specific Power Consumption Optimization for Wearable Electrocardiogram Devices

This paper explores ways for energy consumption reduction in wearable and Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) devices. We use the XBeats ECG patch as a case study application for remote Electrocardiogram (ECG) wearable device power consumption benchmarking. Systematic energy consumption profiling criteria is proposed for evaluating participating components in an RPM device. We isolate each hardware component to find power-intensive processes in the XBeats system, discover energy consumption patterns, and measure voltage, current, power, and energy consumption for a given time period. The proposed optimization techniques demonstrate significant improvements to the hardware components on the ECG patch. The results show that optimizing the data acquisition process saves 8.2% compared to the original power consumption and 1.62% in data transmission over BLE, thus extending the device lifetime. Lastly, we optimize the data logging operation to save 54% of data initially written to an external drive.