Design and Comparative Analysis of ECG Data Acquisition System using Low Power Microcontroller

Electrocardiogram (ECG) is the most commonly used bio-medical signal for diagnostic purpose. It can be used to diagnose heart disease, identify cardiac arrhythmias, and evaluate effect of drugs. Earlier the ECG systems were designed to be used in hospitals and clinics, but now there is an increased demand for the ECG machines that can be used as a lifestyle product for routine health monitoring. For example, we already have systems that are being used in homes for blood pressure and glucose level measurement. Therefore, userfriendly, affordable and portable ECG system that can be managed by the user is a great research area. The size, cost, performance, recording time & energy efficiency of medical equipment design has undergone a great transition along with a timeline. With the advancement in low power embedded hardware technology & Signal processing platforms, more efficient ECG system designs have started to emerge. This paper presents a review of the resent work on the design of portable & low power ECG systems. Further inspired by some of the related work [3-6], this paper also presents to design & development of a wearable & ultra-low power ECG data acquisition system using MSP430 microcontroller. The power consumption of the given design is then compared with other designs discussed in the literature review. The comparison shows that our design consumes the lowest power among these.