A reliable wireless monitoring of periodic vital signals using a novel joint source-channel coding

Abstract

This paper proposes a joint source-channel coding technology to transmit periodic vital information such as an electrocardiogram (ECG). It shows the iterative decoding method using a correlation value which can be obtained from ECG periodicity as Side-Information. The improvement is shown when bit strings are transmitted with different encoding rates. Because the proposed method has an error correcting system and makes a code processing decrease, some miniaturization and energy-saving can be expected of the equipment. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is shown by comparisons with Differential Pulse Code Modulation, which is a typical compression method of ECG, and with the no coding method.