Implementation of Extended Kalman Filter for Real-Time Noncontact ECG Signal Acquisition in Android-Based Mobile Monitoring System

Noncontact electrocardiogram (ECG) measurement using capacitive-coupled technique is a very reliable long-term noninvasive health-care remote monitoring system. It can be used continuously without interrupting the daily activities of the user and is one of the most promising developments in health-care technology. However, ECG signal is a very small electric signal. A robust system is needed to separate the clean ECG signal from noise in the measurement environment. Noise may come from many sources around the system, for example, bad contact between the sensor and body, common-mode electrical noise, movement artifacts, and triboelectric effect. Thus, in this paper, the extended Kalman filter (EKF) is applied to denoise a real-time ECG signal in capacitive-coupled sensors. The ECG signal becomes highly stable and noise-free by combining the common analog signal processing and the digital EKF in the processing step. Furthermore, to achieve ubiquitous monitoring, android-based application is developed to process the heart rate in a realtime ECG measurement.