Handheld Wireless ECG Recording System Based on Printed Metal-Plate Electrodes for Personalized Healthcare

A handheld wireless electrocardiogram (ECG) recording system using metal-plate electrodes is designed and implemented in this paper. The system comprises a low noise and high input impedance analog front-end (AFE) chip KS1081 and Bluetooth low energy (BLE) Microcontroller Unit (MCU) nRF52832 with proposed bio-signal processing firmware. Particularly, a pair of coin-sized dry-contact electrodes manufactured on a standard printed circuit board (PCB) are integrated in this system that can monitor the weak ECG signal from human body skin conveniently and comfortably without using any electrolyte gel. The manufactured prototype system occupied size of only 1.5cm by 2.5cm (core circuit), providing adjust differential gain from 34dB to 57dB over a frequency range of 150 Hz, and consuming around 2mA at single supply voltage of 2V when on-node data processing and wireless communication are both active. Experimental results showed the high accurate ECG signal that comprised P-Q-R-S-T waveforms can be obtained effectively from human fingers using the printed metal-plate electrodes. The preliminary results demonstrated that the developed handheld wireless ECG system is highly suitable for wearable personalized healthcare applications.