This work relates to the quality of the electrocardiogram (ECG) signal of an elderly person, transmitted using optical wireless links. The studied system uses infrared signals between an optical transmitter located on the person's wrist and optical receivers placed on the ceiling. As the elderly person moves inside a room, the optical channel is time-varying, affecting the received ECG signal. To assess the ECG quality, we use specific signal quality indexes (SQIs), allowing the evaluation of the spectral and statistical characteristics of the signal. Our main contribution is studying how the SQIs behave according to the optical transmission performance and the studied context in order to determine the conditions required to obtain excellent quality indexes. The approach is based on the simulation of the whole chain, from the raw ECG to the extraction process after transmission until the evaluation of SQIs. This technique was developed considering optical channel modeling, including the mobility of the elderly. The obtained results show the potential of optical wireless communication technologies for reliable ECG monitoring in such a context. It has been observed that excellent ECG quality can be obtained with a minimum SNR of 11 dB for on-off keying modulation.
Keywords: electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring; optical wireless communications (OWC); outage probability; signal quality indexes (SQIs).