Sensor Review

A low power miniaturized monitoring system of six human physiological parameters based on wearable body
sensor network
Congcong Zhou Chunlong Tu Jian Tian Jingjie Feng Yun Gao Xuesong Ye
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Congcong Zhou Chunlong Tu Jian Tian Jingjie Feng Yun Gao Xuesong Ye , (2015),"A low power miniaturized monitoring
system of six human physiological parameters based on wearable body sensor network", Sensor Review, Vol. 35 Iss 2 pp. 210 -
218
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 A low power miniaturized monitoring system
of six human physiological parameters based
on wearable body sensor network
Congcong Zhou, Chunlong Tu, Jian Tian, Jingjie Feng, Yun Gao and Xuesong Ye
College of Biomedical Engineering & Instrument Science, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to design a low-power human physiological parameters monitoring system which can monitor six vital
parameters simultaneously based on wearable body sensor network.
Design/methodology/approach – This paper presents a low-power multiple physiological parameters monitoring system (MPMS) which comprises
four subsystems. These are: electrocardiogram (ECG)/respiration (RESP) parameters monitoring subsystem with embedded algorithms; blood oxygen
(SpO2)/pulse rate (PR)/body temperature (BT)/blood pressure (BP) parameters monitoring subsystem with embedded algorithms; main control
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subsystem which is in charge of system-level power management, communication and interaction design; and upper computer software subsystem
which manipulates system function and analyzes data.
Findings – Results have successfully demonstrated monitoring human ECG, RESP, PR, SpO2, BP and BT simultaneously using the MPMS device. In
addition, the power reduction technique developed in this work at the physical/hardware level is effective. Reliability of algorithms developed for
monitoring these parameters is assessed by Fluke Prosim8 Vital Signs Simulators (produced by Fluke Corp. USA).
Practical implications – The MPMS device provides long-term health monitoring without interference from normal personal activities, which potentially allows
applications in real-time daily healthcare monitoring, chronic diseases monitoring, elderly monitoring, human emotions recognization and so on.
Originality/value – First, a power reduction technique at the physical/hardware level is designed to realize low power consumption. Second, the
proposed MPMS device enables simultaneously monitoring six key parameters. Third, unlike most monitoring systems in bulk size, the proposed
system is much smaller (118 ⫻ 58 ⫻ 18.5 mm3, 140 g total weight). In addition, a comfortable smart shirt is fabricated to accommodate the portable
device, offering reliable measurements.
Keywords Body sensor network, Healthcare monitoring, Low power, Smart shirt, Wearable
Paper type Research paper

Nomenclature 1. Introduction
Abbreviation Health monitoring systems have drawn more and more
ECG ⫽ Electrocardiogram attention, as people suffering from age-related diseases are
RESP ⫽ Respiration increasing and the aging process is speeding up in many
SpO2 ⫽ Blood oxygen countries. And the cost of hospitalization and patient care
PR ⫽ Pulse rate continuously rises worldwide. Health monitoring system
BT ⫽ Body temperature which works out of hospitals may assist residents and
BP ⫽ Blood pressure caregivers by providing non-invasive or invasive continuous
MPMS ⫽ Multiple physiological parameters monitoring health monitoring with minimum interaction of doctors and
system patients, and thus helps to reduce hospitalization and
BSN ⫽ Body sensor network healthcare costs (Baig and Gholamhosseini, 2013).
RA ⫽ Right arm
Body sensor network (BSN) is widely used in health
LA ⫽ Left arm
monitoring systems due to an easy integration of both sensors
LL ⫽ Left leg
and sensor interconnections. Within the progress in network
RL ⫽ Right leg
communication, wireless systems make it possible to provide
AFE ⫽ Analog front-end
MCU ⫽ Main control unit long-term continuous sensing without activity restriction and
behavior modification.

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on
Emerald Insight at: www.emeraldinsight.com/0260-2288.htm
Sensor Review
35/2 (2015) 210 –218
© Emerald Group Publishing Limited [ISSN 0260-2288]
[DOI 10.1108/SR-08-2014-687]
This work is supported by National Key Technology R&D Program in the
12th Five-Year Plan of China (No. 2012BAH06F00) and National
Science and Technology Major Project of the Ministry of Science and
Technology of China (No. 2013ZX03005008).
Received 18 August 2014
Revised 24 October 2014
Accepted 1 December 2014

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Congcong Zhou et al. Volume 35 · Number 2 · 2015 · 210 –218

Researchers have developed integrated carrier products, control subsystem 3 and smart shirt in detail. In Section 3,
such as smart clothing, pieces of jewelry, wristwatches, rings experiments are conducted to evaluate the performance of the
(Wu et al., 2009), shoes (Bamberg et al., 2008), glasses system. In Section 4, test results are discussed. Finally, this paper
(Coughlin, 2007), gloves (Simone et al., 2007) and so on, to is concluded in Section 5.
allow sensors to be worn as accessories by users. Among the
location of sensing technology systems mentioned above, 2. System design and algorithms
smart clothing has the ability to monitor more vital signs than
Different physiological parameters are classified into
others. The Georgia Tech Smart Shirt characterized as a
subsystems based on the detection principles and system
“wearable motherboard”, allowing a variety of vital parameters to
resources for power consumption management. Distributed
be incorporated into the vest which could be worn by the
and flat design methods are applied here to miniaturize the
soldiers. But, blood pressure (BP) was not considered in their
monitoring system. The multiple physiological parameters
vest (Gopalsamy et al., 1999).
monitoring system (MPMS) device is mainly composed of
A wearable medical monitoring and alert system (AMON)
four subsystems. They are ECG/RESP parameters monitoring
targeting high-risk cardiac/respiratory patients was developed
subsystem 1 with embedded algorithms; SpO2/PR/BT/BP
under grants from the European Union FP5 IST program.
parameters monitoring subsystem 2 with embedded algorithms;
The wearable monitor consisted of a wrist-worn device which
main control subsystem 3 which is in charge of system-level
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measured skin temperature, BP, blood oxygen (SpO2) and

power administration, communication and interaction design;
one-lead electrocardiogram (ECG; Anliker et al., 2004)
and upper computer software subsystem 4 which has the ability
without monitoring respiration. An unobtrusive and wearable,
to manipulate system function and analyze data. Figure 1 depicts
multiparameter ambulatory physiological monitoring system
the block diagram of the system.
for space and terrestrial application, termed LifeGuard, was
developed by a team of researchers at National Aeronautics
2.1 Design of ECG/RESP parameters monitoring
and Space Administration (NASA) and Stanford for extreme
subsystem 1
environments, space and terrestrial conditions (Mundt et al.,
The ECG/RESP monitoring subsystem 1 designed here is
2005). But, this system did not consider power management.
based on four main goals:
The SensVest, an item of wearable technology that measured
1 low power;
physical performance such as heart rate, temperature and
2 minimized number of sensors;
movement, was developed. The SensVest was designed for use
3 small in size; and
by science teachers and students to meet their requirements
4 convenient to use.
(Knight et al., 2005) without considering power management.
The MagIC project was developed in Milan, Italy, using a Low power consumption is critical, as it contributes not only
textile-based system for the unobtrusive measurement of vital to prolong lifetime but also to realize system miniaturization.
signs (Di Rienzo et al., 2006) without considering BP. A The impedance changes of chest are monitored to measure
wireless sensor network-based wearable smart shirt which respiration. Right arm (RA) and left arm (LA) leads are
measured ECG and acceleration signals for continuous and intended to measure RESP and ECG parameters at the same
real-time health monitoring was designed and developed (Lee time, which minimizes the number of sensors.
and Chung, 2009). A health monitoring system that could Figure 2 depicts the block diagram of ECG/RESP
measure human vital signs including human ECG, heart rate, monitoring subsystem 1. There are four measuring electrodes
SpO2 and recognize human activity based on BSN was and one reference electrode, which are attached to RA, LA,
fabricated (Wang et al., 2014) without considering BP. left leg (LL), chest (C) and right leg (RL), respectively.
In spite of the contributions to wearable monitoring systems, A low-power ECG detection module is designed and
health monitoring systems mentioned above considered one or fabricated. Signals obtained by ECG sensors are sampled at
more physiological parameters, while at the same time, monitoring
of multiparameter physiological signs leads to cumbersome and
Figure 1 The block diagram of the system
inconvenient systems. As a result, miniaturization of systems which
monitor multiple human physiological parameters is valuable. Also,
power consumption, which is important in wearable systems for
long-term continuously monitoring, should be studied.
In this paper, a miniaturized wearable health monitoring
system which simultaneously monitors human ECG, RESP,
pulse rate (PR), SpO2, body temperature (BT) and BP with low
power consumption is designed and fulfilled. A low-power
structure has been applied to reduce power consumption by
hardware and software codesign. The system size is miniaturized
to 118 ⫻ 58 ⫻ 18.5 mm3 and the weight is 140 g with the
battery. Besides, a smart shirt which is convenient for the users is
designed and fabricated to provide reliable measurements.
The organization of this paper is as follows. Section 2 describes
the design of ECG/RESP parameters monitoring subsystem 1,
SpO2/PR/BT/BP parameters monitoring subsystem 2, main

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Congcong Zhou et al. Volume 35 · Number 2 · 2015 · 210 –218

Figure 2 The block diagram of ECG/RESP monitoring subsystem 1 determined by following equation (1), whereindicates the
first-order differential signal of peak position n:

兵 xxnn ⬎⫻0,xxnn⫺⫺11 ⱕ⬍00

共 兲
共 兲
共
共
兲
兲
(1)

The peak numbers and peak positions are recorded in two

data arrays, respectively. Then respiration rate is calculated
form the equation below:

Peaknumbers
Respiration_rate ⫽ 600 ⫻ (2)
Peakposition

2.1.2 ECG algorithm

ECG preprocessing algorithm is embedded in the MCU1 after
ECG signals are captured in real time at the sample rate of 250
the data rate of 250 Hz and buffered in designed ECG AFE Hz. First, signals pass through a low-pass digital Butterworth
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circuit. Then, data are fed to MCU1 via SPI at the baud rate
of 500,000 Hz and transmitted through UART1 at the baud
rate of 115,200 to the main MCU3 of main control subsystem
3. An RC filter acts as an electromagnetic interference filter
with the ⫺3dB bandwidth of 1 MHz at the input is applied.
Also, a RL drive circuit is designed to reduce interference
generated by surrounding electromagnetic devices.
Impedance pneumography technique to measure respiration
rate is realized here. RA and LA leads which work as both drive
electrodes and receive electrodes for RESP monitoring are
multiplexed with ECG monitoring. The high-frequency AC
current source (32 kHz, square wave) which works as a modulate
signal is generated by the MCU1. Then, signals obtained are
amplified by INA321 (Texas Instruments), which provides
low-noise amplification of differential signals with 40 ␮A current.
The analog front end has a basic gain of 15 and a high common
mode rejection radio of ⫺94 dB. After the signals are amplified,
an infinite gain multiple feedback (MFB) band-pass filter circuit
is designed with the central frequency at 32 kHz and passband
bandwidth of 6.5 kHz, then it is followed by a detection circuit to
filter with a cutoff frequency of 100 Hz and a high-pass filter
with the corner frequency of 0.5 Hz to filter unnecessary signal
components. Second, a five point’s average algorithm is
applied to smooth ECG signals and attenuate 50 Hz noise in
real time. After that, ECG signals are stored in data arrays and
sent to upper compute every second.
The detection of the QRS complex is important in ECG
monitoring. But it is difficult because it has a time-varying
morphology and is subject to physiological variations due to
the patients. In our work, a QRS detection algorithm based on
wavelet transform is designed in the upper computer. The
mother wavelet which possesses appropriate high vanishing
rules used to detect the signal singularity is Mexican Hat
(Mexh) wavelet. The Mexh wavelet is a second-order
derivative Gaussian function whose shape is like a Mexican
hat, as described by Lee et al. (1998). The time domain and
frequency domain characters are shown in Figure 3(a). The
standard Mexh wavelet and its Fourier transform can be
expressed as follows:
2
t

demodulate and extract the low-frequency respiration signals. ␺(t) ⫽ a ⫻ (1 ⫺ t ) ⫻ e 2 ⫺2

(3)
After demodulation, the signals are MFB low-pass filtered to the
2 Hz bandwidth level to remove unwanted noise. Amplifier used ⫺␻
2

here is OPA348 (Texas Instruments) with supply current of 45
␮A. The demodulated and filtered outputs are then digitized by
analog-to-digital converter (ADC) of MCU1. At last, respiration
waves are sent to the main MCU3 of main control subsystem 3
at the baud rate of 115,200.
2.1.1 RESP algorithm
The respiration waves are converted by ADC from analog to
digital, then respiration rate is computed by the following
algorithm.
The RESP algorithm is applied to the data buffer of 20
seconds. First, the signals pass through a low-pass digital
Butterworth filter with a cutoff frequency of 1.5 Hz to filter
high-frequency signal components. Second, the data are
sorted every 1 second and the respiration rate is calculated
every 5 seconds. Third, the peak positions of signals are
detected with the indirect derivative calculation method along
␺(␻) ⫽ 兹2␲ ⫻ a ⫻ ␻2 ⫻ e 2 (4)
where:
2 1
a⫽ ␲4.
兹3
The main steps of QRS detection are as follows:
● Step 1: Preprocess ECG signals with low-pass digital
Butterworth filter, high-pass filter and average algorithm
described above. After ECG signals are stored in data
arrays and sent to upper compute, the data are
standardized by using discrete wavelet transform.
● Step 2: Calculate the positive maximum detection signals
(Pmax) and the minimum detection signals (Pmin),
determine the threshold of R(ThR) wave by:

冉兺 冊
with peak numbers. The sample rate here is 10 Hz, which n m
means 200 data during the detection period of 20 seconds.
The values and peak positions of respiration signals are
ThR ⫽ b ⫻
1
1
P ⫺
n max 兺 m1 P
1
min (5)

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 Low power miniaturized monitoring system
Congcong Zhou et al.
Figure 3 ECG algorithms
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● Step 3: Set an absolute un-detection during time which can
be set as 200 to 400 ms according to the physiological
characteristics of different situations.
● Step 4: Detect the QRS feature points, such as Q wave and
S wave.
Figure 3(b) depicts the results of QRS complex detection. In
our future work, real-time QRS detection algorithm used for a
low-power embedded system will be studied.
2.2 Design of SpO2/PR/BT/BP parameters monitoring
subsystem 2
Figure 4 depicts the block diagram of SpO2/PR/BT/BP
monitoring subsystem 2. The temperature monitoring block
in subsystem 2 consists of a calibration circuit, a constant
current source (CCS) circuit and a high-precision gain
amplifier INA321 with the gain of 15. The calibration circuit
consists of a bridge circuit which is calibrated to read
Figure 4 The block diagram of SpO2/PR/BT/BP monitoring
subsystem 2
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Sensor Review
Volume 35 · Number 2 · 2015 · 210 –218
temperature from 32°C to 42°C by placing the sensor in one
arm of the bridge circuit. The CCS circuit which outputs
constant current of 400 ␮A consists of LM334M and
1N4148. The temperature sensor used here is Platinum
Thermistor (PT100) which has a resolution of 0.1 per cent.
The results of temperature are digitized by ADC of MCU2
and then sent to the main MCU3 after algorithm.
The SpO2/PR monitoring block in subsystem 2 is based
on Langbert – Bill laws. Red light with 660 nm central
wavelength and near-infrared light with 940 nm central
wavelength irradiate finger tips alternately. SpO2 is calculated by
measuring periodical changes of the two types of light, while PR
is calculated at the same time. The results are fed to MCU2 via
UART0 and then sent to the main MCU3.
Non-invasive BP measurement method is applied here. The
BP monitoring block in subsystem 2 consists of two functional
parts, one is detection circuits and the other is protection
circuits. The BP detection circuits consist of preamplifier with
the gain of 15, MCU3, band pass filter circuits with the
bandwidth of 0.1-30 Hz and control circuits of pump. The
protection circuits consist of a comparator and control circuits
of valves, these circuits will automatically work as soon as the
pressure detected is above the threshold (260 mmHg). The
detected signals are digitized by ADC of MCU2 and then sent
to the main MCU3 after algorithms.
2.2.1 BP algorithm
After the BP waves digitized by ADC of MCU2, the peak
numbers and peak positions are recorded in two data arrays,
respectively.
The measurement of BP in this thesis is based on the
oscillometric method. First, detect the peak points of BP
waveform, according to which the best Gaussian fitting curve
which fits the contour line of the waveform is matched. Restrict
to the limitation of MCU2 resources, the peak points used to
calculate the fitting curve are limited. Second, calculate the
locations of diastolic blood pressure (DBP) and systolic blood
pressure (SBP) by the proposed coefficients which are statistics
 Low power miniaturized monitoring system Sensor Review
Congcong Zhou et al. Volume 35 · Number 2 · 2015 · 210 –218

results from massive experiments based on the prototypes of the
MPMS device. At last, DBP, SBP and mean BPs are calculated.
2.3 Design of main control subsystem 3
The main control subsystem 3 mainly consists of battery
management circuits, peripherals such as keyboards and LCD
screen, main MCU3 (MSP430FG5438) with four
communication modules, power management module and
wireless module, as depicted in Figure 5.
and cotton. Figure 6 illustrates the integration sites of sensors
and electrodes in the shirt.
There is evidence indeed that emotional states have their
corresponding specific physiological parameters that can be
mapped, respectively (Lisetti and Nasoz, 2004); our MPMS
device with smart shirt provides another option to real-time
monitor six vital physiological parameters for emotions
computing without interfering with the normal activities of a
person, which makes it more reliable.

2.4 Design of smart shirt 3. Experimental

Development of smart textiles that accomplish many functions
Prototypes of the MPMS device have been developed and tested for
led to the developments in new wearable sensing systems. Salvo
functionality, reliability and stability. The size of the proposed
et al. (2010) developed a wearable sensor for measuring sweat
MPMS device is miniaturized to 118 ⫻ 58 ⫻ 18.5 mm3 and the
rate. Paradiso and De-Rossi (2006) illustrated sensorized shirts
weight is 140 g with the battery (3.7 V, 1,500 mAh) in total. To the
for vital signs monitoring and wearable systems for gesture and
best of our knowledge, we cannot find a similar low-power system
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posture recognition. Coyle et al. (2010) developed a personalised

which monitors these six physiological parameters at the same time
healthcare management system that integrated a textile-based
and is smaller in size and lighter in weight than our prototype of
fluid handling system for sample collection and transport with a
MPMS device. Mundt et al. (2005) developed a wearable
number of sensors including sodium, conductivity and pH
multiparameter ambulatory physiologic monitoring system with the
sensors. Scilingo et al. (2005) reported on results of a careful
dimensions of 129 ⫻ 100 ⫻ 20 mm3 and the weight was 166 g.
characterization of the performance of innovative fabric sensors
Wang et al. (2014) developed a health monitoring system that could
and electrodes able to acquire vital biomechanical and
measure human vital signs and recognize human activity based on
physiological signals, respectively. Wearable fabric sensors were
BSN, while did not mention the size and weight. Park et al. (2006)
used to acquire the respitrace and movement sensors in the
presented a description and evaluation of a wireless system based on
research. The smart shirt proposed here is comfortable to wear
innovative ECG sensors with the size of 26 ⫻ 15 ⫻ 7 mm3 and the
and convenient to use. Unlike systems mentioned above, both
weight was less than 17 g, but the system could only monitor the
conventional Ag/AgCl electrodes and fabric electrodes are
ECG parameter.
acceptable to monitor ECG parameter. As all the sensors and
electrodes are demountable, this smart shirt is washable and
3.1 Hardware platform
more reliable than some other smart clothes for long-time
Figure 7 illustrates the prototype of the developed MPMS device
monitoring.
with wireless module integrated. The MPMS device has a micro
The smart shirt is composed of two layers. The specific
HDMI interface with wires and sensors integrated, which
location sites of sensors and electrodes for multiple
includes the Platinum Thermistor (PT100) temperature sensor,
physiological parameters monitoring are integrated in the
SpO2/PR monitoring probe and five ECG cables. All the wires
inner layer of the smart shirt. The sensors connect to the
integrated in the HDMI interface are shielded by shielding layers
MPMS by means of wires, which are stitched in the middle
and the ECG/RESP parameters monitoring subsystem 1 is
layer in the trace. The shirt is made of knitted lycra material
shielded by a shielding case. The cuff used to monitor BP
is stitched in the smart shirt. Figure 8 illustrates the remote
Figure 5 The block diagram of main control subsystem 3

Figure 6 The design of smart shirt

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 Low power miniaturized monitoring system
Congcong Zhou et al.
Figure 7 Prototype of the developed MPMS device with wireless
module integrated
Figure 8 Remote monitoring station and MPMS device with smart
shirt
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central station and MPMS device with smart shirt wearing by
a male subject. The wireless transmission distance of wireless
module between the central station and system user is up to 10
m without loss of signal quality.
3.2 Software platform and smart shirt
The system software is developed in Windows 7 platform and
written in C#. The upper computer software is able to
manipulate system function and analyze data. Based on these
demands, after the communication is set and the baud rate
(115,200) is chosen, the upper computer can be used to
control the MPMS prototype when to start or end data
collection through wireless communication module. The
collected six physiological parameters can be displayed in the
software interface.
Besides, an alternative way to manipulate the MPMS device
when there is no upper computer is designed by simply
pressing preserved keyboards on the MPMS device and the
results will be shown on the LCD screen.
4. Results
4.1 Power consumption
Low power consumption design and reasonable power
managements are of significant importance in battery-powered
devices. Most of works focused on developing energy-efficient
medium-access control (MAC) protocols to reduce power
consumption. A low-power and traffic-adaptive MAC protocol
for wireless body area network was presented (Ullah and Kwak,
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Sensor Review
Volume 35 · Number 2 · 2015 · 210 –218
2012). An energy-efficient MAC protocol which was designed
specifically for a star topology composed of clusters was also
presented (Omeni et al., 2008). Nabi et al. (2010) proposed a
multi-hop protocol for human body health monitoring. Li and
Tan (2010) proposed a novel time division multiple access-based
MAC protocol designed for BSNs. These studies all focused on
MAC layer to reduce power consumption during wireless
transmission.
Some other works did not describe how to realize low power
consumption. Li (2010) presented a wireless sensor network
system whose main board was a low-power consumption main
board with the “H8” micro controllers, and extended to be
available for external usages.
A power reduction technique at the physical/hardware level
compared to existing research works is designed. Different
physiological parameters are classified into subsystems based
on the detection principles and system resources. In system
level, the main control subsystem 3 turns down subsystem 1
and subsystem 2 when necessary, which makes the MPMS
device work in a low-power mode. In this mode, there will be
almost no power consumption in both subsystem 1 and
subsystem 2. Also, Bluetooth wireless communication module
can be turned down to reduce power consumption when not
in use. To realize this function, an ultra-low-power switch
TPS22922 (Texas Instruments) driven by the microcontroller
is inserted. The device offers ultra-low on-state resistance that
is 14 m⍀ @ 3.6 V and excellent on-state resistance matching
to prevent signal distortion during the transferring. The
shutdown current is 35 nA @ 1.8 V. The main control
subsystem 3 may work in standby mode, in which the
peripherals such as keyboards, screen and settings on-chip of
Msp430 like ADC, Bias, OA0 and OA1 are all shut down.
In addition, low-power ECG/RESP monitoring module and
BT monitoring module were designed as mentioned above, all
components selected in our research were low-power ones.
The instruments used to test the power consumption were
the DC power supply of Agilent E3631A and multimeter of
Agilent 34401A. Results measured in working conditions
based on the proposed power reduction technique are shown
in Table I. The system was powered by a lithium battery (3.7
V, 1500 mAh). Table I shows that the power consumption of
the system was almost 189 mW and the system could work
nearly 29.3 hours continuously.
There were some other health monitoring systems described
their power consumption. Wang et al. (2014) developed a
health monitoring system that could measure human vital
signs and recognize human activity based on BSN, the power
consumption of ECG module was 132 mW, SpO2 module
was 105.6 mW and wireless module was 75.9 mW. Magno
et al. (2013) presented a low-power wearable sensor networks
platform for on-body physiological measurements and
Table I The test results of power consumption
Module Voltage/V Current/mA Power/mW
ECG 3.3 1.80 5.94
RESP 3.3 0.34 1.12
BT 3.3 1.31 4.32
MSP430 3.3 6.30 20.81
SpO2/PR 3.3 15.64 51.61
Bluetooth 3.3 19.3 63.69
 Low power miniaturized monitoring system
Congcong Zhou et al.
wireless data communications, the power consumption (active
mode) of ECG module was 67 mW, and Bluetooth module
was 89.1 mW. Compared to present research, our power
reduction technique at the physical/hardware level and
efficient operating procedure developed here were effective.
4.2 Results of ECG/RESP parameters test
The MPMS device was tested for safety issues according to
Medical electrical equipment-Part 1: General requirements
for safety (GB 9706.1-2007/IEC 60601-1) standards; the
patient leakage current, auxiliary leakage current and
enclosure leakage current measured were all below 1 ␮A,
while maximum permitted was 10 ␮A for each.
The proposed MPMS device was estimated by Fluke Prosim8
Vital Signs Simulators (produced by Fluke Corp. USA). Setting
the ECG and RESP parameters of ProSim8 and connecting the
MPMS device to the lead sites as shown in Figure 9, the
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measured ECG/RESP parameter waves are shown in Figure 10.
There were obvious T waves, P waves and QRS complex waves
in ECG curves, as shown in Figure 10, in I, III, aVR leads, the
Figure 9 Experiment platform of ECG/RESP parameters test
Figure 10 The real-time standard ECG/RESP parameter waves displayed on the upper computer
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Sensor Review
Volume 35 · Number 2 · 2015 · 210 –218
collection accuracy of standard ECG signals was above 99 per
cent, which showed that the ECG monitoring block could
monitor the ECG parameter reasonably.
The accuracy of respiration rate measurements was ⫾1
times per minute at the range of 15 to 40 times per minute, as
shown in Figure 11.
4.3 Results of SpO2/PR/BT/BP parameters test
The systolic pressure range tested was from 80 to 160 mmHg
and diastolic pressure range was from 50 to 120 mmHg. BP
test results at the PR of 80 bpm and pulse volume of 1 mL are
shown in Table II. The dynamic error of both systolic pressure
and diastolic pressure was below 8 mmHg.
Fluke Platinum Resistance thermometer was used to
calibrate the BT module. The measurement accuracy of BT
were: ⫾0.3°C at the range of 32-35.2°C and 41.1-42.0°C,
⫾0.2°C at the range of 35.3-36.9°C and 39.1-41.0°C and ⫾
0.1°C at the range of 37.0-39.0°C, as shown in Figure 12.
Figure 11 Experiment results of RESP rate
 Low power miniaturized monitoring system Sensor Review
Congcong Zhou et al. Volume 35 · Number 2 · 2015 · 210 –218

Table II Dynamic blood pressure test results (systolic pressure/diastolic physiological parameters, and reliable results were estimated
pressure mmHg) by Fluke Prosim8 Vital Signs Simulators (produced by Fluke
Corp. USA). The MPMS device is a smart monitoring device
Fluke Prosim8 160/120 140/100 135/95 130/90 126/80
which provides real-time feedback to remote monitoring
MPMS device 158/126 136/104 137/98 130/93 122/76
station and can be operated both by remote terminals and
Fluke Prosim8 117/75 110/70 100/65 90/60 80/50
local keyboards. The smart shirt proposed here is comfortable
MPMS device 118/75 111/75 100/65 90/61 79/55
to wear and convenient to use. Although progresses have been
made in some way, there are still problems that need to be
solved. In future, as the source is limited in embedded system,
Figure 12 Body temperature test results
higher-level medical algorithms will be implemented to
classify the results in real time. Current results have
demonstrated the feasibility of the solutions to the
technological and scientific issues. Although there are many
studies that focus on health monitoring systems, to the best of
our knowledge, we cannot find a low-power system which
monitors these six physiology parameters at the same time and
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is smaller in size and lighter in weight than our prototype of

MPMS device until now.
The MPMS device provides long-term health monitoring
without interference from normal personal activities, allowing
potential applications in real-time daily healthcare monitoring,
chronic diseases monitoring, elderly monitoring, human
emotions recognization and so on.

The measurement accuracy of SpO2 was below ⫾ 2 per cent
at the range of 70 to 100 per cent and the measurement
accuracy of PR was ⫾ 2beats per minute (bpm) at the range of
30 to 240 bpm. The experiment platform and results are
shown in Figure 13, where the range of PR (40 to 120 bpm)
was normal in daily life.
5. Conclusion
This work contributes in state of the art of wearable
physiological parameters monitoring. Different physiological
parameters were classified into subsystems based on the
detection principles and system resources for power
consumption management. Distributed and flat design
methods were applied here to miniaturize the monitoring
system. Algorithms were developed to monitor six vital
Figure 13 SpO2/PR test results
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Corresponding author
Xuesong Ye can be contacted at: yexuesong@zju.edu.cn
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