Development of a secure body area network for a wearable physiological monitoring system using a PSoC processor

Wearable physiological monitoring systems have gained popularity in the recent years due to their ability to continuously monitor physiological signals, thereby making them suitable for home-healthcare applications. The electrocardiogram (ECG), phonocardiogram (PCG) and photoplethysmogram (PPG) signals have been studied and it has been observed that there is a correlation between the three signals. This paper proposes the development of a secure body area network (BAN), for a wearable physiological monitoring system. The BAN is composed of three nodes, for ECG, PPG and PCG signals. The peak-peak distances of these signals are calculated first, in the coordinator of BAN. The coordinator is designed in such a manner that signals from it are transmitted to a monitoring station, only if the difference between the peak-peak distances of both ECG-PPG signals and ECG-PCG signals fall below a threshold. The entire operation of the coordinator is implemented using a real-time processor, Cypress(™) Programmable System on Chip (PSoC).