258
3, August 2016
Wireless Surface Electromyograph and Electrocardiograph
System on 802.15.4
Giorgio Biagetti, Member, IEEE, Paolo Crippa, Member, IEEE, Laura Falaschetti, Student Member, IEEE,
Simone Orcioni, Member, IEEE, and Claudio Turchetti, Member, IEEE
Abstract — This paper presents a flexible low-cost wireless
system specifically designed to acquire fitness metrics both
from surface electromyographic (sEMG) and
electrocardiographic (ECG) signals. The system, that can be
easily extended to capture and process many other biological
signals as well as the motion-related body signals, consists of
several ultralight wireless sensing nodes that acquire,
amplify, digitize, and transmit the biological or mechanical
signals to one or more base stations through a 2.4 GHz radio
link using a custom-made communication protocol designed
on top of the IEEE 802.15.4 physical layer. The number of
wireless nodes the base stations can handle depends on the
type of signal being acquired. Each base station is connected
through an USB link to a control PC running a user interface
software for viewing, recording, and analyzing the data. The
system for acquiring signals from wearable nodes in
combination with a smartphone application provides a
complete platform for monitoring fitness metrics extracted
from the signals. 1 0F
Index Terms — Consumer health and fitness monitoring,
surface electromyography, wireless EMG, electrocardiography,
ECG, IEEE 802.15.4.
I. INTRODUCTION
Improvements in technology in the last decade have made it
possible to automate the monitoring and recording of fitness
activities. Activity trackers, that is wearable devices or
applications for monitoring and tracking fitness related
parameters, are now available as consumer electronics.
Current metrics monitored and recorded during fitness are
distance walked or run, heartbeat, calorie consumption.
Monitoring muscular strength is fundamental in many
fitness and sports activities, as it gives useful information on
the exercise correctness as well as energy expenditure.
Nevertheless, little attention has been devoted to consumer
devices for monitoring muscle activity during fitness [1].
Surface electromyographic (EMG) and electrocardiographic
(ECG) signals are two important means by which a person’s
1
G. Biagetti is with the Department of Information Engineering, Università
Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, Italy. (e-mail: g.biagetti@univpm.it)
P. Crippa is with the Department of Information Engineering, Università
Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, Italy. (e-mail: p.crippa@univpm.it)
L. Falaschetti is with the Department of Information Engineering, Univer-
sità Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, Italy. (e-mail: l.falaschetti@univpm.it)
S. Orcioni is with the Department of Information Engineering, Università
Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, Italy. (e-mail: s.orcioni@univpm.it)
C. Turchetti is with the Department of Information Engineering, Univer-
sità Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, Italy. (e-mail: c.turchetti@univpm.it)
Contributed Paper
Manuscript received 05/03/16
Current version published 09/30/16
Electronic version published 09/30/16
IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics, Vol. 62, No.
health status [2], [3], body posture [4], fitness level [5], and
physical performance can be assessed [6]-[8]. As an
application example, in the automotive electronics both EMG
and ECG signals are recently being used to develop driving
interfaces that allow to accelerate, brake and steer the car [9]
or to monitor the driver health and cognitive states for
improving the road safety [10].
Despite their similarities, devices used to record EMG and
ECG signals are usually different [11], with perhaps a few
exceptions [12]. The main reason is that the useful bandwidth
for ECG signals is typically below 100 Hz, whereas EMG
signals can possess significant components extending at least
up to 500 Hz, but suffer from possibly severe motion-induced
artifacts at frequencies below 5 Hz. The amplifier must reject
these low-frequency artifacts, otherwise saturation of the gain
stages will occur.
This work presents an inexpensive and flexible wireless
surface EMG system, called WiSE, that is able to acquire both
sEMG and ECG signals using ultralight (23 g) wireless sensor
nodes with a software-selectable bandwidth. As an additional
feature, the system can be easily configured to capture and
process further biological signals as well as motion-related
signals.
The EMG/ECG sensing nodes are able to acquire, amplify,
digitize, and transmit the biological signals to one or more
base stations through a 2.4 GHz radio link using a custom-
made communication protocol designed on top of the IEEE
802.15.4 physical layer, in order to exploit existing low-cost
and low-power transceivers but also to enable the possibility
of higher throughput and better synchronization than the
standard would have allowed.
The base station can be powered either by an external
power supply or by its USB interface, and contains the RF
transceiver for the wireless connection to the mobile nodes, a
system for simultaneous charging of up to six mobiles nodes,
and a 32 bit microcontroller for managing purposes.
Each base station is connected through an USB link to a
control PC running a user interface software for viewing,
recording, and analyzing the raw data.
On the basis of the WiSE system for acquiring signals from
wearable nodes, an activity tracker has been developed by
combining WiSE system with a smartphone application. The
application has been designed for monitoring some fitness
metrics extracted from the signals. To this end specific
algorithms have been implemented at the server side in order
to derive the desired metrics.
The paper is organized as follows. Section II presents the
state of the art for the wireless EMG/ECG systems. Section III
G. Biagetti et al.: Wireless Surface Electromyograph and Electrocardiograph System on 802.15.4
gives an overall description of the WiSE system. Section IV
describes the hardware used for implementing the mobile
nodes and the base stations. Section V describes the custom-
made communication protocol. Section VI shows a consumer
electronics system for fitness activity tracking that combines
the WiSE system and a smartphone application. Finally,
conclusions are drawn in Section VII.
II. RELATED WORK
The IEEE 802.15.4 standard [13] defines the physical (PHY)
and media access control (MAC) layers of wireless personal
area networks, namely networks having short range (typically
less than 30 m), that work at low rate speed (LR-WPAN).
Although the low power consumption, and the low complexity
of the wireless link, which implies low cost connectivity, would
make IEEE 802.15.4 suitable for applications requiring relaxed
throughput such as industrial, vehicular, and residential sensors
[14], many attempts were performed to convey streaming data
over IEEE 802.15.4 [12], [15]-[17]. The applications go from
streaming audio over 802.15.4 compliant radios [15], to
streaming data in medical applications [12], [16], [17].
Latré et al. [18] investigated the maximum throughput and
minimum delay of the IEEE 802.15.4 standard and showed that
the maximum throughput is not higher than 163 kbit/s.
Therefore, in the present work the authors propose a custom-
made communication protocol, designed on top of the
IEEE 802.15.4 physical layer in order to exploit the wide
availability and low cost of existing transceivers. However, the
MAC and upper layers have been completely redesigned to
enhance the real-time performance and optimize the battery
duration. This allows achieving some key performance
parameters usually found only in higher-level units, such as
highly accurate time synchronization between multiple sensors
and a relatively high sample rate. Indeed, an overall maximum
throughput of 180 kbit/s can be reached.
Other approaches based on IEEE 802.15.4 technology have
been proposed, for instance Kobayashi [12] presented a ZigBee
wireless biosignal acquisition system. An active electrode
amplifies biosignals such as EMG or ECG and streams the data
at up to 2 kilosamples per second. However, if more electrodes
are connected to the same data acquisition host they share the
same bandwidth, and so the capacity of the channel is divided
between the electrodes.
Tung et al. [16] proposed and implemented a dual radio
ZigBee homecare gateway (DR-ZHG) to support remote patient
monitoring. The dual radio implementation increases the
transmission data rate of ZigBee and guarantees low latency and
highly accurate telehealth service at home. The DR-ZHG
supports seven polling service sensors but only one streaming
service sensor.
Park et al. [19] presented a description and evaluation of a
wireless version of a system based on capacitive ECG sensors
that do not require direct contact to the skin. These sensors have
at least equivalent and often superior signal quality and artifact
rejection compared to the standard wet/resistive ECG sensors.
The wireless node uses a low power, 2.4 GHz RF SoC for the
industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) band with a proprietary
GFSK modulation scheme.
259
All the above examples demonstrate the increasing interest in
wireless systems that are able to monitor health status, perform
medical diagnosis, assist training sessions through the
processing of easy-to-acquire biosignals such as the sEMG and
ECG. Still, none of the above solutions presents an EMG
capable device that specifically targets the consumer electronics
market.
III. SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION
This work presents a versatile wireless EMG/ECG
acquisition system together with an application that, running
on the user's smartphone, displays a real-time view of the
training progress.
A block diagram of the overall system is presented in Fig.
1, showing the WiSE signal acquisition system (mobile nodes,
base stations, and control PC) working together with the
smartphone application, thus providing a complete platform
for monitoring the performance and the progress during
sporting and fitness activities.
The easy-to-wear, lightweight mobile node, basically an
active electromyography sensor with integrated wireless
transmitter, reaches state-of-the-art performance using low-
cost electronics, and is the core of the WiSE system. It
comprises an active sensor that acquires, amplifies, digitizes,
and wirelessly transmits the EMG signal to the base station
connected to a PC via a USB interface. It can be remotely
controlled and its analog front-end bandwidth optionally can
be shifted to also allow the acquisition of a differential (two
leads) ECG signal. Additionally, it can simultaneously stream
linear acceleration, temperature, and other signals useful for
tracking the patient’s activity and to monitor the system itself,
up to a total of 30 kbit/s net data throughput per node.
Each base station can handle up to 4 active sensors,
transmitting at full speed, and up to 16 base stations can be in
operation in the same radio-coverage area, since every station
uses a single IEEE 802.15.4 RF channel.
Fig. 1. A WiSE system showing base stations and mobile nodes in
combination with the smartphone application. Up to 16 base stations can
be connected via USB to the computer.
260 IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics, Vol. 62, No. 3, August 2016

The control PC allows complete remote operation of the

mobile nodes: they are normally in a deep stand-by mode, in
which they draw an extremely low current, allowing for
months of storage without depleting the battery. The mobile
nodes are wirelessly awakened by the base station, and in a
few seconds they become completely operational and ready to
start a measurement, which is triggered from the PC. The
GPL-licensed software provides full control of the WiSE
system. Acquired data is displayed in real time on the PC
monitor and recorded for later processing. Complete remote
diagnostic of the sensors, including battery level, node
temperature, and radio link strength is also available.
Finally, the smartphone application wirelessly interacts with
the control PC, from which it receives a stream of fitness-
related features to be presented to the user.
IV. HARDWARE DESCRIPTION
A. Mobile Node
The mobile node, as shown in Fig. 2, comprises an AC-
coupled instrumentation amplifier (IA) cascaded with a
programmable gain amplifier (PGA) and a low pass filter
(LPF), a circuit for the common mode biasing of the IA and
for measuring the electrode contact resistance, a circuit for the
power supply and recharging of the battery, and an 8 bit
microcontroller. Additional sensors, such as a 3-axis
accelerometer, can also be included.
Fig. 3. Contact resistance measurement circuit.
If a measure of the contact resistance is needed, the DAC is
programmed to produce a sinusoidal signal between its
outputs. In this case the wiper of the digital potentiometer is
put on the D terminal. This action produces a differential
signal at the input of the IA whose amplitude is related to
contact impedance. In fact, the contact impedance forms a
voltage divider with the two common mode resistances and
the input DC blocking capacitors. These resistances have very
high values (10 MΩ) so the signal at the input of the IA has a
very small amplitude, but comparable to the EMG signal, so
that it can be measured through the standard signal acquisition
path.
In order to evaluate the performance of this circuit different
combinations of contact resistance and capacitance were
measured. TABLE I reports the results obtained with a resistor
and a capacitor in parallel. The high impedance of the series
of the common mode resistance and the DC blocking
capacitors makes it difficult to obtain high accurate
measurements of very low contact impedances. Nevertheless,
as can be seen in TABLE I, the relative error tends to decrease
as the contact impedance increases, and the resistance
measurement is seldom more than 10% off. This performance
makes it quite easy to face the problem of identifying the
detachment of the electrodes, or their physical degradation.

TABLE I
Fig. 2. Mobile node schematic. PERFORMANCE OF IMPEDANCE MEASUREMENT CIRCUIT

The microcontroller acquires the analog signal from the Nominal Values Measurements Relative Errors
PGA and transmits it to a base station using the standard R C R C eR eC
IEEE 802.15.4 physical layer, with a custom protocol kΩ nF kΩ nF % %
described in Section V. It communicates through an SPI with 8.2 0 7.19 3.7 -12.35
an integrated RF transceiver operating in the 2.4 GHz ISM 8.2 22 7.31 21.7 -10.82 -1.36
band. It also controls the battery charger and the circuit for 8.2 33 7.70 41.0 -6.06 24.24
8.2 47 7.86 46.1 -4.18 -1.91
measuring contact resistance.
8.2 220 7.39 220.1 -9.89 0.05
The measure of the contact resistance is an innovative 33.0 0 31.68 2.0 -4.00
feature of this EMG system. A detailed schematic for this 33.0 22 31.50 22.8 -4.53 3.64
circuit is shown in Fig. 3. A digital to analog converter (DAC) 33.0 33 31.27 32.7 -5.26 -0.91
is used to provide the common mode bias for the IA, putting 33.0 47 31.33 52.3 -5.05 11.28
33.0 220 31.00 232.0 -6.07 5.45
the B output at the desired voltage and the A output in a high 120.0 0 115.53 0.4 -3.72
impedance state. In this case the wiper of the digital 120.0 22 115.70 22.5 -3.58 2.27
potentiometer can be adjusted in order to reduce the possible 120.0 33 116.82 35.1 -2.65 6.36
mismatch between the common mode resistances, and 120.0 47 118.53 50.4 -1.23 7.23
120.0 220 130.18 228.0 8.48 3.64
therefore to increase the CMRR.
G. Biagetti et al.: Wireless Surface Electromyograph and Electrocardiograph System on 802.15.4 261

The availability of such information is quite important for the

expected application scenario, as a user involved in physical
training or other fitness activities usually does not exercise
under the direct and constant supervision of a human trainer,
and the detachment of an electrode during an activity might pass
unnoticed if the system does not alert the wearer.
With this system in place, contact impedance can be
measured at regular intervals and the user alerted if something is
wrong, asking them to reposition/replace the electrodes, e.g.
through the smartphone application.
Another innovative aspect of the mobile node is its capability
of being used as an ECG sensor other than as an EMG sensor. Fig. 5. Measured frequency response of the ECG and EMG acquisition
To allow this, the bandwidth of the sensor must be shifted to systems, inclusive of AD conversion and digital interpolation filter (for
also include lower frequencies, which are detrimental to the the ECG case).
acquisition of the EMG, but necessary to correctly acquire an
ECG signal. Since the input differential resistance of the IA is
very high (20 MΩ), it is easy to obtain a very low cutoff
frequency (fL = 160 mHz) from the DC blocking input
capacitors (100 nF each). The integrator, connected in feedback
to the Vref input of the IA, realizes a high pass filter, setting the
low frequency cutoff of the signal at the IA output, according to
the EMG band (5 Hz). As a consequence, the rejected band is
present at the integrator output, namely 160 mHz – 5 Hz.
The IA output is then low-pass filtered to set the high
frequency cutoff at 500 Hz, as shown in Fig. 4 (see TABLE II
for circuit parameters). The low band and high band signals are
driven to the inputs of the PGA mux that, if the ECG signal is
requested, multiplexes them to the ADC so that both are
acquired and transmitted, and can later be recombined digitally
by means of a simple low-pass interpolation filter, with a cut-off
frequency of 75 Hz, to restore the full-band ECG signal.
Fig. 6. Comparison of the measured input-referred noise spectral density
for the acquired signals vR(t) (low-band component) and vF(t) (high-band
component), computed from the ADC output with the external electrodes
shorted, together with that of the recombined signal.

As can be seen, the EMG channel has a very good noise

performance, with an RMS noise integrated over its whole
bandwidth of just 4.1 µV, as it is necessary to acquire possibly
very low-level EMG signals. The low-pass channel, being
obtained through integration, obviously manifests higher low-
frequency noise. It is also retained in the recombined ECG
Fig. 4. Signal acquisition circuit.
channel, giving an integrated RMS noise of 3.2 µV, slightly
lower than that of EMG because of the reduced bandwidth of
TABLE II ECG signal, despite of the higher low frequency noise.
SIGNAL ACQUISITION CIRCUIT PARAMETERS Furthermore, each mobile node can optionally handle up to
GIA Rcm Rhp Chp Rlp Clp four digital thermometers connected to the I2C bus and
244 10 MΩ 143 kΩ 220 nF 2.87 kΩ 100 nF powered by the mobile node itself. The temperature values are
sampled at low frequency and transmitted alongside the EMG
The effect of the system can be seen in Fig. 5, where the voltage values using spare bytes, thus they have no effect on
frequency response measured on a prototype unit is shown for the sampling rate of the main signal.
the two channels and their recombination. The complete printed circuit board (PCB) of the mobile
To further assess the performance of this input stage, its noise node, without battery, is shown in Fig. 7. It measures about
floor was evaluated by shorting the input electrodes and 40 mm × 25 mm. The encased PCB, also housing the battery,
analyzing the spectral density of the signal as acquired by the is shown in Fig. 8. It has a small 2 mm barrel connector
control PC. This way the quantization noise of the ADC is also receptacle for recharging through a standard 5 V DC adapter
included in the measurement and since the PGA gain was set to or by connecting it to the base station, and an LED for status
the minimum, it is the worst-case scenario. The results are reporting, all together weighing only about 23 g including the
reported in Fig. 6. shown electrode attachments.
262 IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics, Vol. 62, No. 3, August 2016

keeping the system within the boundaries of the raw channel

capacity of 250 kbit/s stated by IEEE 802.15.4 for the
2.4 GHz ISM band.
The base station also sports a sophisticated power supply
dedicated to recharging the mobile nodes and which is also
able to communicate with them over the charging wires. This
communication can be used to ease stock-keeping chores, as
nodes can be identified (and MAC addresses collected) as
they are attached to the charger, and their radio configuration
(i.e., RF channel used for wake-up from deep stand-by) set up.
This power-line communications works by modulating with
a standard non-return-to-zero baseband modulation the
Fig. 7. WiSE active sensor.
voltage sent from the base-station to the node being recharged,
by means of a buck-boost switching converter. For the
opposite direction, nodes are able to modulate the current
absorption with a more noise-robust Manchester encoding to
reply to commands, and the base station can sample and
demodulate this current.
C. Key Features
In the following the key features of the system
implementation are summarized:
• High input impedance: 5 MΩ in common mode and
Fig. 8. Cased WiSE active sensor.
20 MΩ differential.
• Selectable bandwidth: 5 Hz–500 Hz for sEMG and
B. Base Station with Integrated Battery Charger 160 mHz–500 Hz for ECG.
The base station can be powered either by an external • 8-steps scope-scaled adjustable gain provides over 46 dB
power supply or by its USB interface, and contains an RF of regulation.
transceiver for wireless connectivity to mobile nodes, a system • CMRR exceeds 100 dB.
for simultaneous charging of up to six mobiles nodes, and a • 10 bit, 2 kHz ADC sampling.
32 bit microcontroller that manages all the different • Radio link: IEEE-802.15.4 compliant physical layer,
components. Fig. 9 shows a photograph of the PCB of base 2.4 GHz band.
station, with the key subcircuits, charger, microcontroller plus • Highly-specialized radio protocol achieves latencies as
radio, and power supply, highlighted. low as 40 ms.
• Low-power: more than 8 h of continuous acquisition
when powered by industry-standard rechargeable
LIR2450 Li-ion batteries.
• On-board battery charger and monitor with Coulomb
counter for accurate residual run time prediction.
• PCB size: 41 mm × 26 mm, 12 mm height (with battery).
TABLE III shows a comparison between the key features of
this architecture and those of research and commercial
implementation.
TABLE III
KEY FEATURE COMPARISON
Standard
Feature Present Work Kobayashi [12] Commercial
Fig. 9. WiSE base station. Offering
Protocol custom IEEE 802.15.4 IEEE 802.15.4
Resolution 10 bit 12 bit ÷ 14 bit 16 bit
The RF transceiver on the base station must be able to cope Sampling freq. 2 kHz ≤2 kHz 1 kHz
with the combined data rate of all the streams generated by the EMG channels 4 ≤4 10
attached mobile nodes. Its performance is thus of paramount Autonomy 8h 12 h 8h
importance. Actually, the limit of 4 mobile nodes per base Range 3m 10 m 20 m
Holter no no yes
station depends on the particular transceiver employed, which Weight 23 g 30 g 10 g
has been chosen in order to minimize the system cost. With Contact R meas. yes no no
better transceivers it would have been possible to extend the ECG yes yes no
limit to 6 mobile nodes per base station, of course always Temp./Acc. yes no no
G. Biagetti et al.: Wireless Surface Electromyograph and Electrocardiograph System on 802.15.4
V. COMMUNICATION PROTOCOL
WiSE employs a custom-made communication protocol
designed on top of the IEEE 802.15.4 physical layer, so it can
exploit the wide availability and low cost of existing
transceivers. The choice of creating a custom protocol was
mandated by the need of simultaneously achieving strict time
synchronization, high throughput and low power
consumption. Standard IEEE 802.15.4 would waste too much
bandwidth, and alternatives like Bluetooth LE are not really
intended for streaming continuous data and would still require
some modifications to allow for accurate time synchronization
[20]. As a reference, a summary of the signature
characteristics of other similar mainstream protocols more
often used in consumer electronics devices are reported in
TABLE IV.
TABLE IV
FEATURE COMPARISON OF MAINSTREAM COMMUNICATION PROTOCOLS
Feature ANT Bluetooth LE WiFi
Present
Protocol
Maximum net
data rate
60 kbit/s 3 Mbit/s 150 Mbit/s 180 kbit/s
Synchronization
n.a. 10 µs 120 µs 1 µs
time
Power very low low high low
consumption (~ µW) (~ mW) (~ W) (~ mW)
As can be seen, while ANT achieves the lowest power
consumption, it has too low a data rate to be even considered
to stream real-time EMG data. Bluetooth LE, on the other
hand, could have offered similar performance as the protocol
we chose, but suffers of a worse synchronization capability.
WiFi, despite its very high bandwidth, still has unsuitable
synchronization abilities, and its power consumption is too
high for the proposed small battery-powered sensors.
Thus, the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC and upper layers have been
completely redesigned to enhance the performance in a real-
time streaming scenario and limit battery drain in both stand-
by and continuous streaming. The transmission scheme is a
beaconed time-domain multiple-access (TDMA) protocol,
with the base station broadcasting short beacons every 32 ms,
thus forming frames with the fixed structure shown in Fig. 10.
The timing has been carefully chosen so as to minimize
software complexity and allow usage of cheap transceivers,
which unfortunately usually also have quite slow host
interfaces thus needing large guard intervals between packets.
Fig. 10. Structure of the frames employed in the wireless link.
263
Higher performing transceivers would have allowed the
inclusion of six receive time slots in each frame, thus
providing a net 180 kbit/s data rate towards the base station.
The beacons can also contain commands addressed to specific
nodes. Each node associated to the base station is assigned a
specific time slot within the frame delimited by the beacon,
and transmits back the acquired data within this dedicated
time slot.
An extremely low stand-by power consumption has been
achieved by awaking the receiver only once per second and
for a very brief time, approximately 1 ms, to detect the
possible transmission of a wake-up call from the base station.
This wake-up call consists of a burst of very short packets, so
that at least one is guaranteed to fall within the receive
window of the sleeping receiver when it opens. In order to
limit the required window time, packets in the burst must be
as small as possible, so that they cannot transport much
information. The addresses of the nodes that are to be awaken
are sent later: the burst awakes all the nodes within radio
coverage, then those which are not needed go again into
stand-by mode immediately after if not called upon. To the
awaken nodes the base station also assigns dedicated time
slots within the beacon-delimited frames.
Synchronization is achieved by exploiting the time-
stamping capabilities of IEEE 802.15.4 transceivers, i.e., their
ability of recording the exact time at which an incoming
packet arrived, with microsecond resolution in this case. In
this way each node can compare the expected time of beacon
reception to the actual stamped time, and adjust its local
oscillator to compensate for drifts and crystal inaccuracies by
means of a digital phase-locked loop (PLL) implemented in
software within the microcontroller. Actual oscillator
trimming is performed by adjusting crystal load capacitance
using a software-configurable on-chip capacitor bank.
This way highly-accurate synchronous acquisition of the
EMG signal between different nodes can be achieved, with all
the nodes being locked to the clock of the base station.
Once the synchronized signals are received by the base
station, they are collected together so that further forwarding
over the USB interface, or any other medium shall the need
arise, does not alter their relative timing.
As an example, a measure of the accuracy of the PLL is
reported in Fig. 11, where the absolute phase error between a
node and the base station is reported as the temperature of the
node was increased from 15 °C to about 26 °C. The PLL was
264
enabled at about 60 s. As can be seen, after a brief transient,
the phase error is maintained well within ±1 µs, despite the
temperature drift of the crystal (nominal frequency 16 MHz).
Fig. 11. An example of local oscillator temperature drift, corrected by the
digital PLL.
VI. EMG STRENGTH TRAINING TRACKING IN CONSUMER
FITNESS MONITORING
The WiSE system in combination with a smartphone
application provides a complete platform for monitoring the
performance and the progress during workouts in a weight
room.
The platform, whose diagram is shown in Fig. 1, constitutes
an effective personal monitoring system in training for muscle
building.
A smartphone application interacts remotely with the
control PC of the WiSE system via WiFi connection.
The application is not intended for showing to the user the
raw electromyographic (or electrocardiographic) signal,
instead it is specifically designed for monitoring some fitness
metrics extracted from the signal by a suitable signal
processing algorithm running in the control PC.
This application, thanks to the wireless connection to the
WiSE system, easily allows the user to set, start, stop, pause
and monitor training exercises from a smartphone. The
application, as shown in Fig. 12, is structured in three tabs:
Home - Training - Results and a menu for settings
(Connection, Audio, ...).
IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics, Vol. 62, No. 3, August 2016
Fig. 12. User interface of the smartphone application.
The Home tab, depicted in Fig. 12(a), shows the training
session in progress: specifically shows in real time the
progression of the sets and the repetitions performed, with
particular attention to the fatigue of the muscle selected, so
that the user is able to perform the exercise in the best way.
The muscle fatigue value is calculated by a suitable algorithm
based on the estimation of the EMG signal root mean square,
estimated during the phases of the exercise when the weight is
being lifted, which manifests an increasing trend as the muscle
becomes fatigued [21], [22].
The Training tab, shown in Fig. 12(b), allows the user to
select training features (muscle type, effort threshold, number
of sets and repetitions, recovery time) and optionally, to save
them for the next session.
The Results tab allows monitoring the progress of the
workouts, day by day, showing a report for each session, as
displayed in Fig. 12(c).
Key features of WiSE smartphone application are:
• recording of workout duration;
• real-time counting of sets and repetitions carried out for
each set;
• notification of the effort value on the selected muscle for
each repetition carried out;
• setting workout preferences;
• setting recovery time between sets;
• generating audible beep and message alert to notify the
end and the
beginning of each sets and the end of the session;
• generating reports of the training results;
• storing chronology of the workouts.
Fig. 13 shows a scheme of the dialogue between the various
entities that comprise the system. Data are exchanged between
the server (PC equipped with WiSE user interface and
connected to base station) and the client (WiSE smartphone
application). On the client side, the smartphone application,
once the IP address and port of the server are selected, sends a
connection request to the server via HTTP interface and waits
for the server response. When connection is established, the
client submits the request to startup the radio communication
on the selected nodes. After synchronization between nodes
and base stations takes place, the training session can get
started. Then the client sends to the server, depending on the
type of training selected, the selected preferences for the
training: the server stores these parameters to use them in the
G. Biagetti et al.: Wireless Surface Electromyograph and Electrocardiograph System on 802.15.4
processing. For each repetition performed, the server sends a
notification to the client and, at the end of the session, sends a
report with the parameters acquired during the session. Once
the session is complete, the server receives a request to close
the communication, disabling the acquisition of EMG signal
and radio communication.
Fig. 13. Communication scheme.
Fig. 14. Training reports after a biceps curl workout. Two different
dumbbell weights, (a) 3 kg and (b) 5 kg, have been used.
265
As an application example, Fig. 14 shows pages from the
training report after a biceps curl workout. Two different
dumbbell weights (3 kg and 5 kg) were used during the
exercise, consisting in two series of ten repetitions each with a
30 s rest. As can be seen, the lighter weight produces only a
small increase in signal strength, as the muscle is not strained
much. The heavier weight, on the contrary, results in a much
more prominent increase in EMG signal strength, a clear and
easily recognizable indication that the muscle is becoming
more fatigued, and hence the workout is being effective in
stimulating the muscle.
VII. CONCLUSION
In this paper an inexpensive wireless system for both sEMG
and ECG signal acquisition has been presented. The system
consists of up to four base stations and several sensing nodes
that wirelessly transmit the biological signals to the base
stations using a custom protocol based on the IEEE 802.15.4
standard. Each base station, that can handle a number of
wireless transmitters depending on the type of signal being
acquired, is connected via USB to a control PC running a user
interface software for data analysis and storage.
The system was developed with the main focus of making it
suitable for healthcare and fitness applications, thus low-cost,
ease of use, and versatility aspects of the solution were taken
into high consideration when making design choices related to
raw electrical performance and signal quality. Despite this,
very good quality was obtained in many key aspects, e.g.
noise floor, time synchronization, etc. This was achieved by
developing a custom radio protocol, implemented over
inexpensive off-the-shelf transceiver chips, that permitted a
high data rate compared to similar devices using the same
physical layer, and a very precise time synchronization, with
microsecond resolution, between the different nodes
connected to a base station.
A few clever solutions implemented in the analog front-end
added some flexibility to the system without increasing its
cost, by allowing essentially the same signal chain to be
usable for both sEMG and ECG acquisition, and to also be
able to measure contact resistance.
The system for acquiring signals from wearable nodes was
used in combination with a smartphone application to provide
an activity tracker for monitoring some specific fitness
parameters extracted from the signals.
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IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics, Vol. 62, No. 3, August 2016
BIOGRAPHIES
Giorgio Biagetti (S’03-M’05) received his Laurea
degree (summa cum laude) and PhD in Electronics
Engineering from Università Politecnica delle Marche,
where he was a research assistant. Since 2008, he has
been an Assistant Professor teaching digital electronics,
and with research interests spanning statistical and high-
level simulation of analogue and mixed-mode integrated
circuits, statistical modelling, coding, synthesis, and automatic recognition of
speech, together with wireless systems and networks for data gathering and
processing.
Paolo Crippa (M’02) received the Laurea degree in
Electronics Engineering (summa cum laude) from the
Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, Italy, in
1994 and the Ph.D. degree in Electronics Engineering
from the Polytechnic of Bari, Italy, in 1999. From 1999
he was Research Assistant at the Università Politecnica
delle Marche. Since 2006, he has been an Assistant
Professor teaching courses in analog and industrial electronics. His research
interests include statistical device modeling, mixed-signal and RF integrated
circuit design, signal processing and neural networks. He serves as a technical
program committee member of several scientific conferences and as a
reviewer for many scientific journals and conferences in these fields. He has
authored or coauthored more than 70 papers in edited books, international
journals and conference proceedings. He is a member of the Italian AEIT.
Laura Falaschetti (S’15) received the B.Sc and the
M.Sc. degree in electronics engineering from the
Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, in 2008
and 2012 respectively. She collaborated with the
Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Informazione – DII at
the Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, Italy,
as research fellow from 2012-2013. She is currently a
Ph.D. Student at the DII. Her main areas of research interest are embedded
system, automatic recognition of speech and biometric signal analysis.
Simone Orcioni (S’89-M’04) received the Laurea
degree and the Ph.D. degree in electronics engineering
from the Università Politecnica delle Marche, where he
was Research Assistant. Since 2000 he is Assistant
Professor, teaching courses in analog and digital
electronics, and publishing a text book. He published
thirty of his hundred international papers in journals,
edited two international books, served as a reviewer
for international journals and conferences. He served as Program Chair at
WISES 2009 and in Program committees for WISES and SPIE conferences.
He has been working in statistical device modelling and simulation,
parametric yield optimization, analog circuit design, and nonlinear systems
such as neural networks, fuzzy systems and Volterra-Wiener systems. His
research interests include also RF integrated circuits, system level circuit
design, and power estimation at system level.
Claudio Turchetti (M’86) received the degree in
electronics engineering from the University of Ancona,
Italy, in 1979. He joined the Università Politecnica delle
Marche, Ancona, Italy in 1980, where was H of the
Department of Electronics, Artificial Intelligence and
Telecommunications and currently is Full Professor of
micro-nanoelectronics and design of embedded systems.
His research interests include: modeling of silicon
devices, simulation of VLSI ICs, statistical analysis of sub-micron ICs, analog
and digital CMOS ICs for artificial neural networks, RF integrated circuits,
computational intelligence, signal processing, pattern recognition, system
identification, system level design. He has served as a program committee
member of several conferences and as a reviewer of several scientific journals.
He published more than 140 journal and conference papers, and two books. He is
an expert consultant of the Ministero dell’Università e Ricerca.