Measurements campaign for interference estimation and performance assessment of a wireless ECG remote monitoring prototype in a city hospital

In this paper we present an experimental campaign which shows the interference levels experienced in a real city hospital in the ISM band as well as the performance of a wearable wireless ECG monitoring system. A typical city hospital usually has several medical and nonmedical devices which work at ISM frequency band. Other sources can be the surrounding private houses WiFi connections as well as the WiFi connection offered by modern hospital to the patients. All these sources can represent a high level of interference for a wearable/portable wireless monitoring system of vital signs. The wireless real-time ECG monitoring prototype which we have developed uses large bandwidth signal that occupies all the ISM band. The performance of the proposed hardware solution following the IEEE802.15.4a standard has been proven in a real situation by means of experimental trials in the emergency ward of a real city hospital.