Bio-WiTel: A Low-Power Integrated Wireless Telemetry System for Healthcare Applications in 401–406 MHz Band of MedRadio Spectrum

Abstract

This paper presents a low-power integrated wireless telemetry system (Bio-WiTel) for healthcare applications in 401-406 MHz frequency band of medical device radiocommunication (MedRadio) spectrum. In this paper, necessary design considerations for telemetry system for short-range (upto 3 m) communication of biosignals are presented. These considerations help greatly in making important design decisions, which eventually lead to a simple, low power, robust, and reliable wireless system implementation. Transmitter (TX) and receiver (RX) of Bio-WiTel system have been fabricated in 180 nm mixed mode CMOS technology. While radiating -18 dBm output power to a 50 antenna, the packaged TX IC consumes 250 μW power in 100% on state from 1 V supply, whereas the RX IC consumes 990 μW power from 1.8 V supply with a sensitivity of -75 dBm. Measurement results show that TX fulfils the spectral mask requirement at a maximum data rate of 72 kb/s. The measured bit error rate (BER) of RX is less than for a data rate of 200 kb/s. The proposed Bio-WiTel system is tested successfully in home and hospital environments for the communication of electrocardiogram and photoplethysmogram signals at a data rate of 57.6 kb/s with a measured BER of <10 for a maximum distance of 3 m.