Embedded Prototype System for Monitoring Heart Rate

Abstract

The vital signs monitoring is very important for patients that suffers some chronic disease because they reflect basic and essential functions in the body. In Mexico, in the last few years, we have noticed that the mortality rate in patients with heart disease has increased significantly due to late diagnosis and lack medical care to patients who have been diagnosed. This work presents a proposal embedded system, that allows continuous monitoring of heart rate with an optical sensor and a Microblaze soft-core embedded in a Spartan-6 FPGA of Xilinx. The Microblaze processor works whit the local processor bus for managing peripherals. Core SPI is used to interface with the sensor. The system detects the heartbeat through the sensor which is placed on the index finger of the patient, the signal is acquired by the soft-core, where the heart rate is obtained through the autocorrelation function. Finally, UART core is used to send data to a computer where is implemented a server application that enables remote monitoring of sensor information.