Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE

Engineering in Medicine and Biology 27th Annual Conference

Shanghai, China, September 1-4, 2005

Microcontroller-based wireless recorder for biomedical signals

C.-N. Chien1, H.-W. Hsu1, J.-K. Jang2, C.-L. Rau1,3, F.-S. Jaw1
1. Institute of Biomedical Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan
2. Department of Electrical Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan
3. Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan

Abstract—A portable multichannel system is described for
the recording of biomedical signals wirelessly. Instead of using
the conversional time-division analog-modulation method, the
technique of digital multiplexing was applied to increase the
number of signal channels to 4. Detailed design considerations
and functional allocation of the system is discussed. The front-
end unit was modularly designed to condition the input signal
in an optimal manner. Then, the microcontroller handled the
tasks of data conversion, wireless transmission, as well as
providing the ability of simple preprocessing such as waveform
averaging or rectification. The low-power nature of this
microcontroller affords the benefit of battery operation and
hence, patient isolation of the system. Finally, a single-chip
receiver, which compatible with the RF transmitter of the
microcontroller, was used to implement a compact interface
with the host computer.
An application of this portable recorder for low-back pain
studies is shown. This device can simultaneously record one
ECG and two surface EMG wirelessly, thus, is helpful in
relieving patients’ anxiety devising clinical measurement. Such
an approach, microcontroller-based wireless measurement,
could be an important trend for biomedical instrumentation
and we help that this paper could be useful for other colleagues.
Keywords—Amplifier, EMG, Microcontroller, RF
I. INTRODUCTION
The technologies of wireless transmission such as
WLAN, mobile phone, a variety of remote controllers, and
broadcaster etc, are widely used in daily life. The wireless
technique used is often application specific. Bio-telemetry,
wireless transmission of signals via radio frequency (RF),
has facilitated biomedical researches for several decades and
has been applied to convey bioelectric potentials like
electrocardiograms (ECG), electromyograms (EMG), or
electroencephalograms (EEG) [1-2]. A miniature wireless
transmission system has been designed that transmits the
signals in analog form [3]. However, the number of channels
that can be conveyed analogically is limited, neither it is
time-multiplexed nor frequency-multiplexed [4-6]. To
increase the number of channels for signal transmission,
digital methods should be used [7].
Owing to the remarkable advance in IC technologies,
there are many microcontrollers with built-in RF circuits
along with their development kits. This offers a starting
point for researchers to customize their systems. Further
advantages of this approach are simplicity and multichannel
capacity. In this investigation, a microcontroller-based
multichannel recording system is proposed. This system can
wirelessly transmit one-ECG and two-EMG signals at the
same time.
Fig. 1. Architecture of the wireless transmission system.
II. SYSTEM DESIGN
The block diagram of the proposed system is shown in
Fig. 1. It can be divided into three parts: a signal-
conditioning unit, a RF transmitter, and a RF receiver.
As Fig. 2A shown, the signal-conditioning unit is
modularly designed in order to accommodate to different
signals. This module was implemented with an
instrumentation amplifier (IA), AD627, an amplifier
(AD8961), a 2nd-order low-pass filter, and an optional 2nd-
order high-pass filter. The gains of the amplifiers depend on
the amplitude of the signal. Similarly, the passbands of the
filters are determined by the spectra of the signals. Further,
the nature of the signals will determine the type of filters to
be used, i.e. Butterworth, Bessel, and so on. Modular design
of this part provides the benefit of optimal conditioning for
various signals and can maximally make use of the dynamic
range of the analog-to-digital (A/D) converter.
The second part is the RF transmitter, which is built-in
the microcontroller, rfPIC12F675, from the Microchip
Technology Inc. The detailed circuit of this part is shown in
Fig. 2B. The rfPIC12F675 is an 8-bit CMOS micro-
controller with UHF ASK/FSK transmitter. It includes a 10-
bit A/D converter with 4 analog inputs. Thus, 4 channels of
signals can be sampled and transmitted by using one
microcontroller with a 433.92-MHz carrier.
As shown in Fig. 2C is the receiver circuit that utilizes
the IC, rfRXD0420. Its architecture is a single-conversion
superheterodyne receiver and compatible with the rfPICTM-

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 series RF transmitters. It is a compact single-frequency
short-range radio receiver requiring only a minimal number
of external components to compose a complete receiver
system. The data were transmitted to the host computer for
further processing via a RS-232 interface in the system.
Fig. 2. Circuits of the complete system. (A) The common circuit of the
modular signal-conditioning unit. (B) Microcontroller-based RF
transmitter. (C) The RF receiver pairs for the microcontroller.
III. APPLICATION
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A typical example of surface EMG recording was
illustrated in Fig. 3. This was a dual-channel rectified
recording measured on the lumber paraspinal muscles from
a low-back pain patient. The total gain of the amplifiers was
programmed at 210 and the corner frequency of the 2nd-
order low-pass filter was at 380 Hz. To meet the sampling
theorem, the sampling rate of the A/D converter was set at 1
kHz.
Fig. 3. An example of the recorded surface EMGs. The signals were
rectified for quantitative analysis.
IV. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
The modular approach of the signal-conditioning unit
provides the advantages of flexibility and high performance.
Each biomedical signal can be optimally conditioned
without concerning the operations of A/D conversion and
wireless transmission. This unit is, therefore, layout in a
daughter printed-circuit board. For different biomedical
signals, different resistors and capacitors were used without
any modification of the common circuitry.
The use of a microcontroller as the building block of the
wireless recorder has the benefits of intelligence, compact
size, and reliability. By the aid of this highly integrated
microcontroller, external components, and hence wirings are
kept to a minimum. The intelligence of this device is due to
the processor itself, which could handle simple pre-
processing tasks. The maximal throughput of the A/D
conversion and the data transmission is about 40 kbits per
second, thus, limiting the applications to low-frequency
signals, such as ECG, EMG, EEG, and so forth. Further
advantage of this device is its low-power consumption,
which is attractive for portable applications. Moreover, this
part was also layout on a motherboard to increase its
mechanical strength. The change of different front-end
modules is thus speeded up.
The developed device has been used to record the
surface EMGs and ECG of low-back pain patients. A great
improvement of it over the recorder previously used is the
 feature of wireless transmission. Patients were usually
worried about the long cables, which interconnects the
electrodes and the previous recorder. Thanks the wireless
technology, they have felt more comfortable than before.
Despite the overall throughput of the rfPIC12F675 is limited
to 40 kbits every second, it is adequate for most biomedical
signals that are low frequency in nature. For higher
bandwidth requirements, the parallel architecture or high-
performance chips could be used.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This work was supported by grant NSC 93-2213-E-

002-129 from the National Science Council, Taiwan, ROC.

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