• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.36 no.11
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• pp.1174-1185
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• 2012

This study develops tight-fitting upper clothing to measure electrocardiography (ECG) data. Taking into consideration the elasticity of the clothing, we made 4 experimental clothes by applying to each a weft reduction rate of 40%, 50%, 60%, and 70%. The 4 experimental clothes were used to measure resting ECG, exercise ECG, and post-exercise ECG for 4 men in their 20s. We compared clothing pressures using sensors on the human body and on a dressform. Subjective wear sensations of the 4 experimental clothes were evaluated using a subjective 7-point scale (with 7 being most excellent). We measured clothing pressures by using the air type pressure (AMI 3037-2) for upper and lower chest sensors in the developed tight-fitting upper clothing. The lower chest sensor showed that the clothing pressure on a human body and dressform changed consistently as the weft reduction rate decreased. The upper chest sensor showed inconsistent changes in clothing pressure as the weft reduction rate decreased. The wearing-test result for preliminary subjects showed that the lower chest sensor was more stable than the upper chest sensor; therefore, we inserted the sensor at the lower chest position before performing ECG. Except for Subject 4, the resting ECGs were stably measured for 3 subjects (Subject 1, Subject 2, and Subject 3) in all the developed clothes (A clothing, B clothing, C clothing, and D clothing). However, D clothing showed stable ECG values after exercise. The results of the experiment showed that we could measure ECG without difficulty using clothes with a weft reduction rate of 40% when the movement was not intense; however, tight-fitting upper clothing with a weft reduction rate of 70% was necessary to measure exercise ECG and post-exercise ECG values.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.43-51
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• 2010

In this study, wearable ECG measurement system was implemented for health monitoring during daily life. A wearable belt-type ECG electrode worn around the chest by measuring the real-time ECG is produced in order to minimize the inconvenience in wearing. The measured ECG signal is transmitted via an ultra low power consumption wireless data communications unit to personal computer using Zigbee-compatible wireless sensor node. The ECG monitoring program is developed at end user which is personal computer. The measured ECG contains many noises mainly due to motion artifacts. For ECG signal processing, adaptive filtering process is proposed which can reduce motion artifacts efficiently and accurately than digital filter. The experimental results show that a reliable performance with high quality ECG signal can be achieved using this wearable ECG monitoring system.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.297-305
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• 2010

A home healthcare system based wireless sensor network, which can continuously monitor and manage the elderly's electrocardiogram(ECG) signal at any space at home without space limit is proposed. The communication coverage of wireless network is expended by multi-hop wireless sensor network. In order to send the elderly's ECG data wirelessly, a small size ECG sensor node was designed to forward the ECG data over multi-hop relay network. The packet acquired by mobile ECG node is transmitted through wireless intermediate nodes to base station for analyzing the packet reception rate. Modified minimum cost forwarding(MMCF) protocol and flooding protocol are designed and implemented to check the transmission efficiency of a packet in a wireless sensor network. The developed MMCF protocol shows an advantage of high reception rate by reduced network traffic.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.13 no.6
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• pp.1215-1221
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• 2009

A novel approach for electrocardiogram (ECG) analysis within a functional sensor node has been developed and evaluated. The main aim is to reduce data collision, traffic overload and power consumption in healthcare applications of wireless sensor networks(WSN). The sensor node attached on the patient's body surface around the heart can perform ECG analysis based on a QRS detection algorithm to detect abnormal condition of the patient. Data transfer is activated only after detected abnormality in the ECG. This system can reduce packet loss during transmission by reducing traffic overload. In addition, it saves power supply energy leading to more reliable, cheap and user-friendly operation in the WSN for ubiquitous health monitoring.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.359-364
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• 2009

This paper presents flexible electrocardiography(ECG) sensors using micro electro mechanical systems(MEMS) and flexible printed circuit(FPC) technology. By using FPC technology, ECG sensors which consisted of an outer hook-shaped electrode and an inner circular-shaped electrode were fabricated on the polyimide substrate. Thereafter, the bipolar ECG sensor was miniaturized using MEMS technology. The ECG measurement capability was examined by attaching the sensor to the human chest and wrist. Performance of the proposed sensors was then compared with ECG measured by commercial Ag/AgCl electrodes. It was verified that ECG could be measured using proposed sensors at only single body.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2006.05a
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• pp.421-425
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• 2006

An ubiquitous healthcare system for the home care of elderly persons was designed and implemented using wireless sensor network technology. The wireless technology for home-care purpose gives new possibilities for monitoring of vital parameter with wearable biomedical sensors, and will give the patient the freedom to be mobile and still be under continuously monitoring and thereby to better quality of patient care. Emphasis is placed on recent advances in wireless ECG system for cardiac event monitoring with particular attention to arrhythmia detection in patient. This paper presents a diagnostic system for cardiac arrhythmias from ECG data, using wireless sensor technology. The system also provides an application for recording activities, events and potentially important medical symptoms. The hardware allows data to be transmitted wirelessly from on-body sensor to the base station and then to PC/PDA. Data is also transmitted to a back-end server for analysis using wireless internet connection. Experiments were conducted using the system for activity monitoring, exercise monitoring and medical screening tests and present preliminary data and results.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2007.06a
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• pp.342-343
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• 2007

In this paper, we developed an integrated miniaturized device which acquires and transmits the signal of ECG an interested heartbeat and body's temperature. Electrocardiogram(ECG) is a recording of the electrical activity on the body surface generated by heart. ECG & temperature measurement is collected by wireless sensor (for Ag/AgCl Thin-Film) placed at designated locations on the body. It is that dual wireless sensor will apply variously to Ubiquitous & Healthcare System.

• Journal of information and communication convergence engineering
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.7-11
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• 2007

The aim of this paper is to design and implement a new ECG signal monitoring and analysis method for the home care of elderly persons or patients, using wireless sensor network (WSN) technology. The wireless technology for home-care purpose gives new possibilities for monitoring of vital parameter with wearable biomedical sensors and will give the patient freedom to be mobile and still be under continuously monitoring. Developed platform for portable real-time analysis of ECG signals can be used as an advanced diagnosis and alarming system. The ECG features are used to detect life-threatening arrhythmias, with an emphasis on the software for analyzing the P-wave, QRS complex, and T-wave in ECG signals at server after receiving data from base station. Based on abnormal ECG activity, the server transfer diagnostic results and alarm conditions to a doctor's PDA. Doctor can diagnose the patients who have survived from arrhythmia diseases.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.382-387
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• 2011

Whether a person is feeling sleepy or reasonably awake is important safety information in many areas, such as humans operating in traffic or in heavy industry. The changes of body signals have been mostly researched by looking at electroencephalogram(EEG) signals but more and more other medical signals are being examined. In our study, an electrocardiogram(ECG) signal is measured at a sampling rate of 100 Hz and used to try to distinguish the possible differences in signal between the two states: awake and drowsy. Practical tests are conducted using a wireless sensor node connected to a wearable ECG sensor, and an ECG signal is transmitted wirelessly to a base station connected to a server PC. Through the QRS complex in the ECG analysis it is possible to obtain much information that is helpful for diagnosing different types of cardiovascular disease. A program is made with MATLAB for digital signal filtering and graphing as well as recognizing the parts of the QRS complex within the signal. Drowsiness detection is performed by evaluating the R peaks, R-R interval, interval between R and S peaks and the duration of the QRS complex..

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.27-33
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• 2009

With the upcoming u-healthcare era, a way of measurement for vital sign monitoring of cardiac patients is changing as well. In existing measurement of cardiac patients, various wire in ECG measuring equipment has caused much discomfort and inconvenience. In order to decrease the problem, we are developing an efficient measurement of ECG signal using Wireless sensor network. In this paper, we present a way to reduce amount of data by transmitting ECG data collected from radio electrocardiogram sensor based on Zigbee after calculating cardiac rate. And in order to control the error which can be caused by the different ECG signal intensity each individual can has, we also suggest an adaptive pulse measurement model which can measure heart rate with correcting according to different ECG intensity. To verify the suggested model, sensor application was developed and the data was acquired in TinyOS 2.0 environment and the adaptive pulse measurement model was evaluated through the data from the experiments.