ECG-Enhanced Multi-sensor Solution for Wearable Sports Devices

Electrocardiogram (ECG) plays a crucial role in the prevention of cardiovascular diseases in humans and various types of ECG monitoring equipment are continuously being developed. Most monitoring methods place the electrodes near the heart or on both arms, based on standard ECG leads. Although accurate monitoring effect has been achieved by these conventional approaches, the wearable performance still need to be improved. This paper proposed a novel ECG-enhanced multi-sensor solution for wearable sports devices. A wireless and wearable ECG detection system based on signal acquisition from left upper-arm was designed to verify this solution method. The system has been evaluated with solid experiments proving that the system has outperformed existing similar system. Moreover, the inertial measurement unit (IMU) and electromyography (EMG) data were detected and fused by the system to determine the validity of the ECG signal. It indicated that the system can achieve a good performance of heart rate detection under different body states.