Wireless Body Area Network for Heart Attack Detection

This article describes a body area network (BAN) for measuring an electrocardiogram (ECG) signal and transmitting it to a smartphone via Bluetooth for data analysis. The BAN uses a specially designed planar inverted F-antenna (PIFA) with a small form factor, realizable with low-fabricationcost techniques. Furthermore, due to the human body's electrical properties, the antenna was designed to enable surface-wave propagation around the body. The system utilizes the user's own smartphone for data processing, and the built-in communications can be used to raise an alarm if a heart attack is detected. This is managed by an application for Android smartphones that has been developed for this system. The good functionality of the system was confirmed in three real-life user case scenarios.