Bioimpedance Measurement System for Smart Clothing
Timo Vuorela, Kari Kukkonen, Jaana Rantanen, Tiina Järvinen, and Jukka Vanhala
Tampere University of Technology, Institute of Electronics
Korkeakoulunkatu 3, FIN-33720, Tampere, Finland
timo.vuorela@tut.fi
Abstract
Bioimpedance of a human body produces a great deal
of information about the changes of the body during
different kinds of activities. According to the measured
impedance for example the amount of water in the body
can be derived. This kind of information would be very
useful e.g. for many athletes. At the moment the
impedance measurement systems, intended for measuring
the human body, are quite complex, expensive, and they
are not designed for measuring a mobile user.
In this research a wearable bioimpedance
measurement system has been implemented. The
measurement system has been integrated into a shell suit.
Many tests have been carried out. From the measurement
results the behavior of the Total Body Water value can be
calculated.
1. Introduction
Bioimpedance of the human body can be used in many
applications, e.g. in impedance cardiography [1],
respiration monitoring, and body composition
measurement [8]. It has also been proved that the Total
Body Water (TBW) and the balance between
Extracellular Water (ECW) and Intracellular Water
(ICW) can be found by using the bioimpedance
measurement [5]. These values can then be used to reveal
the dehydration [9].
The goal of this research was to integrate a
bioimpedance measurement system to clothing, and to
find out whether it is possible to do reliable impedance
measurements for mobile users. If possible, the
measurement results would be utilized for calculating the
changes of the users’ TBW.
A wearable TBW measurement system would bring
advantages e.g. to athletes or workers in hot
environments. In these situations dehydration forms a
considerable risk for performance. An unnoticeable
Proceedings of the Seventh IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC’03)
1530-0811/03 $ 17.00 © 2003 IEEE
system, which could warn the user from the changes of the
water balance, would remarkably increase the
performance as well as safety. For example during a
marathon the exertion is very high and the importance of
drinking is emphasized. A wearable body impedance
measurement system could be used during training
sessions before races to produce information about the
changes in the athlete’s body composition under exertion.
Afterwards this information could be exploited during the
competitions to determine the amount of liquid that will
be needed to compensate dehydration.
This paper starts with a discussion about
bioimpedance basics in the Section 2. Then in the Section
3 the hardware of the implemented measurement system is
shortly presented. In Section 4 the software of the
measurement system is handled and in the Section 5 the
integration of the measurement system to the clothing is
discussed. In the Section 6 the tests made with the
measurement system are presented and discussed. This
paper is closed with Section 7, which presents some of the
future work to be done with the impedance measurement
and draws main conclusions of this paper.
2. Bioimpedance basics
In this Section basics of the bioimpedance
measurement are explained. First, the model of the
impedance of the human body is presented and then the
placement of electrodes is briefly discussed.
2.1 Model of body impedance
Most commonly the impedance of the human body is
modeled as parallel connections of resistances and
capacitances, as shown in Figure 1 [2]. Capacitances of
the model are mainly caused by cell membranes. The
passive part of the cell membrane consists of two lipid
layers. Parallel with that in the membrane structure are
protein channels, transport organelles, and ionic channels.
Electrically these channels represent shunt pathways
between both sides of the membrane. These pathways
 allow the ions to travel through the cell membrane
affecting the concentrations of the ions in both sides of the
membrane and the voltage difference over the membrane.
The cell membrane is very thin, only about 7 nanometers
and due to this the capacitance is very high. [1]
Resistances of the model represent ability to resist the
movement of ions.
heart, electrodes were placed to right arm and to right leg
of the user as shown in Figure 2.
There would have been other possible ways to place
electrodes. For example placing two electrodes to the left
hand and two electrodes to the right hand (Hand To Hand,
HH measurement), but then it would not have been
possible to measure the impedance of the torso as
accurately as in the used Hand To Foot (HF) measurement
method.

Figure 1. Model of human body impedance

2.2 Placement of electrodes

Figure 2. Placement of the electrodes
Bioimpedance can be measured using two, three or
four electrode connection. In the two-electrode 3. Measurement system hardware
measurement system it is difficult to estimate a possible
contribution of the electrodes to the measurement. Also Measurement system hardware can be divided into
the body segments which are not very near the measuring three main functional blocks, which are an analog
current path may cause disturbances to the measurement. measurement system, a digital control system and a user
When the third electrode is added it comes easier to interface. A block diagram of the system’s hardware is
control the measurement zone. Adding of fourth electrode presented in Figure 3.
eliminates the effect of the current carrying electrodes in
the measurement. [1]
The geometric shape of the measured object affects
greatly to its impedance. For example a cylinder with a
large diameter has lower impedance than a cylinder with a
smaller diameter. This is also the case when measuring
the body. For example the impedance of arms and legs is
much higher than the impedance of the torso.
Due to the shapes of human body segments, it is
obvious that legs and arms dominate the impedance of the
body. These extremities account for 85 – 88% of the total
body impedance [4]. The body can be roughly divided to
five segments, which are both arms and legs, and the Figure 3. Block diagram of the measurement
torso. This is illustrated in Figure 1. Changes of the water system
balance can cause changes to impedance of any segment.
As mentioned before, using four electrodes it is possible 3.1 Analog measurement system
to determine the impedance of any segment.
In this research places for the electrodes were chosen The analog measurement system consists of six
so that it is possible to measure impedance of three modules, which are a signal generator, two
segments at once. To avoid current going through the instrumentation amplifiers, two peak detectors and, a
phase detector.

Proceedings of the Seventh IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC’03)

1530-0811/03 $ 17.00 © 2003 IEEE
 The signal generator causes constant amplitude
sinusoidal current with frequency of 5kHz or 50kHz. This
current is then fed through the body symbolizing the
measured impedance (Z). The generated current is
measured with a current measurement instrumentation
amplifier and the voltage over the measured impedance is
measured with a voltage measurement instrumentation
amplifier.
Measured signals are then fed to the peak detectors
and to the phase detector. The peak detectors generate a
constant DC voltage value according to the peak value of
the measured signal. Correspondingly the phase detector
generates a constant DC voltage according to the
difference of the phase between the current and the
voltage signals.
The peak detectors consist of a simple RC circuit,
which holds the peak value of the sampled signal. To get
accurate results, the loss currents in the detector had to be
minimized. Due to this peak detectors came very tolerant
to sudden changes in the measured signals. To make the
detectors follow the changes in the signal levels more
quickly, a reset function was added. Before every
measurement the holding capacitor of the RC circuit is
connected to the ground through a small resistor. This
arrangement will discharge the capacitor and allows the
voltage in the detector output to decrease.
In phase detection the instrumentation amplifiers feed
current and voltage signals to the phase detector. The
detector signals are fed through comparators, which will
produce voltage corresponding to logic one to their output
if the sinusoidal signal in the input is positive. After
comparators, the voltage and current signals are compared
with a basic type logic AND gate. If both the current and
voltage signals are positive at the same time, the AND
gate will produce logic one to it’s output. Otherwise the
output of the AND gate will remain at zero. According to
this, the shape of the signal in the AND gate’s output is a
square wave, which duty cycle is proportional to the
difference in the phase between measured current and
voltage signals. This square wave is then filtered with two
cascaded second order Sallen-Key low pass filters. These
filters are designed so that they form a fourth order
Butterworth low pass filter with –3dB frequency at 100
Hz. After the filter the signal is nearly pure constant
voltage.
For system calibration, an accurate reference
resistance, Rref, was added to the measurement system.
Before every measurement the system is automatically
calibrated by measuring the impedance of the reference
resistance. After the calibration measurement, the system
calculates correction constants for actual measurements.
Switching between reference resistor and the measured
impedance is done with four two pole CMOS switches.
Proceedings of the Seventh IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC’03)
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According to measurements made during the
development of the measurement system, it turned out that
the power consumption of the analog circuits is quite
much. When all analog modules are on, the power
consumption of the whole system is about 1.25 W. This is
definitely too much for a wearable device.
The power consumption problem was solved with
MOSFET switches. Switches are used to turn off the
supply voltage from the analog modules between the
measurements. With this arrangement the power
consumption of the measurement system was decreased to
only 110 mW between the measurements. One problem
still remains. Because all the digital electronics are
connected to the positive battery, the power taken from
this battery is greater than the power taken from the
negative battery. Due to this the capacity of the positive
battery determines the operating hours of the
measurement system.
3.2 Digital control part
A digital control part is used to supervise the
functionality of the impedance measurement application.
This part of the system can be divided into two separate
sections, analog to digital converter (ADC) and the
microcontroller unit (MCU). Analog to digital conversion
in the ADC is done with accuracy of 12 bits and with the
reference voltage of 4.096 Volts. This means that the
incoming signals can be measured with steps of 1mV. In
theory, with 12 bit ADC it is possible to achieve a signal
to noise ratio (SNR) of 74 dB for the converted signal. [6]
MCU takes care of controlling the measurements and
handling the results. Based on analog to digital
conversions the microcontroller calculates the
bioimpedances of the user and stores the results to a
nonvolatile memory. For storing the measurement results
the digital control part contains 32 K bytes of Electrically
Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory (EEPROM).
When all the measurements are completed, the
measurement results can be transferred to a personal
computer through an asynchronous serial interface. Bit
rate of the serial bus is 19200 bit/s, but the amount of the
data is so high that reading the maximum number of
measurement results takes at least fifteen seconds.
The digital control part, EEPROM, and the user
interface are connected together through an I2C
compatible serial bus. The I2C compatible bus was
selected because it allows more than two devices to share
the same bus, and it does not require any kind of chip
selection signals. Due to this the whole bus can be
implemented with only three wires. Minimum amounts of
wire are beneficial in wearable technology since wires
increase the weight and can stiffen the original clothing.
 3.3 User interface
The user interface consists of two capacitive push
buttons and a vibrating dc motor. Capacitive buttons do
not need visible metallic contacts and therefore it was
possible to make buttons fully sealed, which makes them
also washable. Washable components in smart clothing
provide a great advantage compared to those that need to
be removed before washing. The attachments of the
washable components can be made tight and this makes it
easier to hide the components inside clothing.
The push button is placed in the feedback loop of the
free running multivibrator circuit, which produces a
square wave to its output. When the button is pressed the
capacitance of the button changes and due to this also the
frequency of the oscillator changes. Oscillator frequency
is sampled with a microcontroller and according to
sampled frequencies the status of the button is derived.
Capacitances of the push buttons were measured with
an LCR meter using the frequency of 1kHz. Results are
shown in the Table 1.
Table 1. Push buttons capacitance
Pushed Not pushed
OFF button 27,8pF 22,4pF
ON button 26,5pF 22,0pF
The vibration motor of the user interface was placed to
an empty shell of a pencil, and the shell was then sealed
with silicon. The created packet was sewn inside the rib
stitch of the measurement clothing. Placement of the
tactor motor was chosen so that the contact between the
motor and skin would be as good as possible. In the rib
stitch an elastic band will tighten up the motor against the
arm of the user and in this way guarantee a decent contact.
3.4 Electrodes
In metallic wires, current is mainly a current of
electrons. In the tissue there are not many free electrons
and the current is mainly caused by ions. Due to this, the
interface between the electrode and the body plays a very
important role in the measurements. [7]
First tests were made with commercial Ag/AgCl
electrodes. These electrodes are round shaped and filled
with a wet gel to make the contact between the electrode
and skin better. Attaching electrodes to body was done
with glue, which was also supplied with electrodes.
Because the measurement system was supposed to be
wearable, gluing the electrodes every time the system is
used, is not very desirable. According to this, one goal of
this research was to find out whether it is possible to
Proceedings of the Seventh IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC’03)
1530-0811/03 $ 17.00 © 2003 IEEE
measure the bioimpedance with electrodes, which are
permanently attached to the clothing.
With help of our partners we got few electrodes made
out of conductive fabric. These electrodes were then
modified by sewing a conductive yarn to every one of
them. Conductive yarn was used to establish a connection
between the electrode material and a metallic snap
fastener. Snap fasteners were utilized to connect the
modified electrodes to the measurement system.
The most critical varying parameter of the fabric
electrodes used in this research was the size. The smallest
electrodes were square shaped and had an area of 4 cm2.
The largest electrodes were rectangle shaped and area of
them was 35 cm2. Area of the electrode is an important
parameter, because the resistance of the skin is inversely
proportional to the contact area between the electrode and
the skin [7].
4. Measurement system software
There are actually two separate microcontroller units
(MCUs) in the impedance measurement system. One is
placed to the digital control part, and another to the user
interface. In this section the software of both MCUs is
shortly presented.
4.1 Digital control part
The microcontroller of the digital control part is
ATmega163 [3] produced by Atmel Corporation.
ATmega163 has 16K bytes of in-system programmable
flash memory for instructions and 1024 bytes of in-system
SRAM (Static Random Access Memory) for variables and
stack.
Code in the ATmega163 takes care of almost all the
functionality in the measurement system. After one AD
conversion is made, the MCU counts the absolute and the
phase values of the impedance according to measured AD
conversion values. During each measurement, the
measurement system takes predefined number of AD
conversions. After all conversions are done and all the
absolute and phase values of the impedance are
calculated, the MCU counts the average values from
calculated absolute and phase values. These average
values are treated as final measurement results and the
system stores them to the nonvolatile memory.
In one measurement session, the measurement system
makes measurements with a predefined interval. However
this interval cannot be shorter than ten to fifteen seconds.
This is due to the large amount of AD conversions made
during the session. One measurement at a predefined
frequency usually takes about five or six seconds. During
each measurement, the impedance is measured at two
frequencies. If the interval between two measurements is
 too short, there is a risk that consecutive measurements 5. Integration of hardware to clothing
will overlap and cause some malfunctions.
Even through ATmega163 has many useful operational In this Section the integration of the impedance
blocks, it lacks the presence of a multiplication and measurement system to the clothing is discussed. First the
floating point units. Due to this all the multiplications and placement of all modules is described and then some
floating point operations are to be made with software. analysis of the functionality of the placement is presented.
Software multiplications are quite slow and take many A shell suit was chosen as a platform for the
instructions to complete. In the written software the impedance measurement system. Integration of the
absolute impedance value and the phase angle of the measurement system to the suit was a challenging task,
impedance are presented as an IEEE standardized single because the fabric used in the suit is quite slippery and
precision floating point numbers. One floating point moving. Placement of the different modules is shown in
number needs space of four bytes and it is clear that the Figure 4.
computation with floating point numbers without a Whole measurement system was first placed on the
floating point unit consumes quite much time. 200mm x 280mm fabric plate, which was then attached to
the lower back of the jacket with Velcro tapes. Due to this
4.2 User Interface arrangement, it is possible to remove the whole
measurement system as one piece when the suit is washed.
The microcontroller of the user interface is Placement of the measurement modules on the fabric plate
AT90S4433LS [3] produced by Atmel Corporation. This is shown in the Figure 5.
controller has only 4K bytes of in-system flash memory
and 128 bytes of SRAM. Only functions of the MCU are
to drive the tactor motor and to control the capacitive
push buttons. Therefore, small amount of memories does
not cause any restrictions in the code. However problems
occurred in the I2C-routines. The AT90S4433 does not
have any hardware based I2C-module, so the I2C-routines
are implemented with software.
The usage of the measurement system interface has
been kept as simple as possible. Both push buttons have
only one function. First button starts the measurements
and the other one stops them.
All feedback from the measurement system comes
through the tactor motor. Software is written so that it is
possible to drive different kind of sequences to the motor. Figure 4. Measurement system in clothing
For example starting the measurements will be
acknowledged with three short vibration pulses.
Correspondingly stopping the measurements is
acknowledged with three long vibration pulses. The
length of the pulses is specified so that it is easy for the
user to notice the difference between different feedback
sequences.
To keep the feedback simple, only six different
vibration sequences were specified. One for starting the
whole measurement system, one for starting the
measurements and the other one for stopping them, as
mentioned before. There are also feedback sequences for
a measurement system malfunction, and for the case that
the memory of the system is full. One very useful
feedback sequence was one short pulse, which was used
to acknowledge the proper operation of the measurement
system in every three minutes during the measurement
session. Figure 5. Measurement electronics

Proceedings of the Seventh IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC’03)

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 The main power switch of the measurement system to leg and arm of the user with elastic bands. Distance
was placed inside the hemline of the jacket. Hemline of between electrodes was approximately five centimeters in
the jacket is so loose that the switch is easy to use. The both arm and leg. Attachment of electrodes is shown in
switch was sealed with silicon, so it can be left inside the Figures 6 and 7.
jacket while washing. In spite of this, the switch was sewn Using the elastic bands with electrodes made it
to the jacket so that it is easy to remove or replace. possible to test different kind of electrodes with only one
The impedance measurement system is battery suit. With this arrangement it was also possible to test
powered, and the batteries are definitely the heaviest how the measured impedance values change according to
modules of the system. Measurement system requires two changing placement of electrodes.
batteries, which are placed to sides of the jacket and
attached to cloth with Velcro. This placement balances the
weight of the system equally between the left and the right
sides of the suit. This will of course increase the length of
the wires inside the clothing. However the increase of the
weight caused by wires will be considerably smaller
problem than the weight imbalance if the batteries are
placed on the same side.
The impedance measurement system is mainly
designed for right handed users. This is why the user
Figure 8. Conductive plates in trousers
interface of the system was placed to the left sleeve of the
jacket. The Printed Circuit Board (PCB) of the user
interface is placed near the biceps of the user. Two push
buttons are then placed side by side below the PCB and
finally the vibrator is sewed inside the rib stitch of the
sleeve.

Figure 9. Suspenders front

Figure 6. Electrodes in right hand

Figure 10. Suspenders back

The measurement signal wires, which are coming from

Figure 7. Electrodes in right foot
the right leg of the trousers, need to be connected to the
actual measurement system. This connection was cleverly
Measurement system electrodes are placed to the right
made with suspender clamps. There are two plates of
hand and the right leg of the user as shown in the Figure
conductive fabric in the collar of the trousers. Suspenders
2. Electrodes are connected to the suit with simple snap
are then simply snapped to these plates and the connection
fasteners and conductive yarns. In the first stage the
is established. From suspenders’ clamps the measurement
electrodes are not attached to the clothing permanently.
signals are connected to the measurement electronics with
Instead of permanent attachment electrodes were attached

Proceedings of the Seventh IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC’03)

1530-0811/03 $ 17.00 © 2003 IEEE
 ordinary wires. Conductive plates are shown in Figure 8
and suspenders attached to the trousers are shown in
Figures 9 and 10.
In the first stage the measurement wires coming from
the leg and arm, were made out of ordinary equipment
wire. Main concern with these cables was the possibility
that wires would pick up some disturbances from the air.
The problem was solved by replacing the equipment wires
with individually shielded cables. Shields of cables were
then connected to the ground potential. When the
measurement system was tested with these cables, it
turned out that the parallel capacitance caused by the
grounded shields was so high that the measurement results
were strongly dominated by the reactive error component.
After this test all the measurement wires between
electrodes and the measurement electronics were replaced
with flexible silicone insulated wires.
As mentioned before, there are two snap-in
connections in the paths of the measurement signals from
the leg to the measurement electronics. First one is the
snap fastener of the electrodes, and the second one is the
suspender’s clamp between the trousers and the jacket.
During the development of the impedance measurement
system it was a little bit unclear if these connections will
have some kind of effect to the measurement signals. For
investigating this possible effect of connections
resistances of the measurement paths were measured with
an LCR meter. Measurements were done at frequencies of
1kHz and 120Hz. Measured values are shown in the Table
2.
Table 2. Resistance of measurement wiring
120Hz/mΩ 1kHz/mΩ
Leg current electrode 184 186
Leg voltage electrode 179 163
Arm current electrode 104 101
Arm voltage electrode 111 114
It can be clearly seen that the resistance of the wiring
in the leg is a little bit greater than the resistance of the
wiring in the arm. This is easily explained with the length
of the wiring in the leg, which is about twice as long as
the wiring in the arm. In the leg there are also two snap in
connections on the path from electrodes to the
measurement electronics and in the arm there is only one.
In any case the resistance caused by the wiring and
connections is so small that it is very unlikely to have any
effects to the measurement results. From Table 2 it can be
seen that the resistance is almost independent of the
measurement frequency and due to the nature of the
resistance this is exactly the way it should be. The little
variation in the results is mainly caused by the inaccuracy
of the LCR tester.
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Table 3. Capacitance between voltage and
current wiring
120Hz/ 1kHz/ Z5kHz/ Z50kHz/
pF pF MΩ MΩ
Leg 28 27,2 1,15 0,115
Arm 20 20,9 1,56 0,156
The capacitances between the current and voltage wire
in the leg and the arm were also measured. The results are
shown in Table 3. These capacitances were also measured
at two frequencies.
From the results it can be seen that the capacitance
between the measurement wires is quite small. The fourth
and fifth columns of the Table 3 show calculated values of
the impedance between the measurement wires. Because
the impedance of the human body is about 400Ω, it is
clear that the impedance between measurement wires is
much higher and due to this it does not disturb the
measurements.
In the wearable applications the enclosures are a little
problem. Every piece of the PCB needs some kind of
cover, but a good enclosure is usually quite heavy and
large. Bare PCB’s would be lightweight and small but
also very vulnerable. In the impedance measurement
system this problem was solved with a heat shrinkable
tubes. All PCB’s were covered with a plastic heat
shrinkable tube. This kind of cover is quite thin and it
keeps the biggest trash away from PCB’s surface.
Unfortunately the enclosure is not totally waterproof
because of the connectors, but PCBs are to be removed
during washing, so the waterproof is not a big issue.
Anyway the heat shrinkable tube is tight enough to
prevent sweat causing short circuits.
Placement of modules is quite successful. All modules
are almost unnoticeable and do not spoil the original
flexibility of the shell suit. Only the placement of the user
interface module is a little bit unsuccessful. Because users
are quite different in the length of arms, it was difficult to
choose an optimal location for the user interface. The
placement in the sleeve is quite a good choice, because
now the wires are short. Unfortunately in this
implementation the PCB of the user interface module was
sewn a little bit too down. Now the module is almost in
the elbow of the user and in this place it little bit districts
the movements of the left arm.
Tactor is placed quite well. Motor is unnoticeable, but
when the feedback is activated vibrations are easily
detected. Also the buttons are very unnoticeable and easy
to use. Because all buttons are sewn in lining of the sell
suit they are invisible from outside. Due to this, tiny
marks were sewn to the jacket for making the locating of
the buttons easier.
 6. Measurements
Tests with the impedance measurement system started
in the middle of the February, 2003. First tests were quite
short, only fifteen or twenty minutes of walking outside.
Purpose of these first tests was just to verify the
functionality of the measurement system. During the first
tests some little bugs were found and fixed. When the test
showed that the impedance measurement system worked
out correctly, the test times began to get longer and
longer. The longest test last nearly two hours, which was
almost the extreme limit for the test person.
Impedance measurement system was tested with
persons involved to this project. The first intention was to
test the system in many different kind of sport activities,
but eventually tests were done mainly by walking. This
turned out to be a good choice, because walking is quite
smooth exercise and so there are no sudden movements,
which could have some effects to measurements.
During the test the measurement system measured the
absolute value and the phase angle of the users
bioimpedance, as explained in the section 4.1. After the
test these values were transferred to a PC and further
analyzed with Excel spreadsheet program. Measured
absolute and phase angle values were converted to a
parallel and serial components used in the modeling of the
human body impedance.
Figure 11. Serial model of body impedance
Figure 12. Parallel model of body impedance
Serial model of the body impedance is shown in the
Figure 11. Resistive component of the serial model can be
calculated with equation RS=|Z|cosϕ and the capacitive
component with equation XS=|Z|sinϕ. In these equations
the |Z| is the absolute value and ϕ the phase angle of the
measured impedance.
The parallel model of the body impedance is shown in
the Figure 12. Components of this model can be
calculated from component values in the serial model with
equations RP=RS+(XS2/RS) and XP=XS+(RS2/XS).
Proceedings of the Seventh IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC’03)
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Using the calculated parallel resistance, the TBW was
calculated. TBW was calculated with equation
TBW=k/RP [1], where k is a constant. In Every test same
value was used for k, so the results are comparable. Even
through this is not an official way to calculate the TBW, it
produced some information about the changes in the body
during the test.
First three tests were done with one male test person.
During these tests it was found out that the body
impedance increased a little bit during the test and due to
this the calculated TBW value decreased. Because there
was similarities in results with one person, the next step
was to found out the behavior of the impedance with
another test person.
Another male test person then made the fourth test.
One goal of this test was also to found out how the
impedance will change if the exertion is kept on for quite
long a time. The duration of the test was about two hours
and in the end of the test the test person was clearly
exhausted. The curve 1 in the Figure 13 presents the
calculated TBW values of this test at frequency of 50kHz.
From Figure 13 can be seen that the TBW value smoothly
decreased approximately three units during the test.
Similar long lasting test was also done with the first
test person. This way it was possible to compare the
behavior of the TBW under long exertion between two
different persons. In the end of this test the test person
was also quite exhausted, but perhaps the test was a little
bit too short. Duration of the test was about seventy-five
minutes. Calculated TBW value was found to decrease
smoothly about one unit during the test. TBW values of
this test are presented in Figure 13 in the curve 2.
In the first tests the impedance of the body seemed to
increase and due to this the calculated TBW value
decreased. According to these measurements it was
obvious, that during the test the total amount of water in
the body decreases due to the sweating and evaporation.
The next step was to test the impedance measurement
system so that during the test some water was drunk. The
idea behind this testing method was to compensate the
lost of water, and to found out if the drinking had some
effects to the measurement. First test with water lasted
about ninety minutes. During the first forty-five minutes
no water was drunk. In the half way of the test about three
deciliters of water was drank in ten minutes. Rest of the
test was then again walked without drinking. The results
were interesting. The TBW value still decreased nearly
one unit, but the moments when the water was drank,
were clearly noticeable in the impedance graphs. Water
was drunk from a bottle, so every time the arm was bend
for drinking or for opening the bottle, there was a
detectable peak in the impedance. TBW values of this test
are presented in Figure 13 in the curve 3.
 Figure 13. Calculated TBW values at frequency of 50 kHz
Next test was done on the very next day and was
perhaps the most interesting one of them all. In this test
the water was drunk, in every six minutes. Again every
time the water was drunk there was a detectable peak in
the TBW curve. Total consumption of water during the
test was approximately four deciliters and the length of
the test was about eighty-five minutes. Calculated TBW
values of this test are presented in Figure 13 in the curve
4. From Figure 13 it can be seen that the TBW value
decreases a little bit, less than a half of the unit, but the
changes are smaller than in the test were no water was
drunk. This result is very interesting. If the effect of
drinking can be measured as accurately as in this test, it
will prove the correct functionality of the measurement
system.
So far all the tests were done with male test persons.
To investigate the differences of the impedance behavior
between male and female users, two tests with female test
persons were carried out. These test were done without
drinking any water during the test and results showed that
the behavior of the result was very much similar
compared to the results achieved with male test persons.
In both tests the TBW value seems to decrease about one
unit during the test. Calculated TBW values of these tests
are presented in Figure 13 in curves 5 and 6.
To make the Figure 13 easier to read, a little offset is
added to every TBW curve. This was possible because the
offset increases the absolute value of the curve, but does
not change the curves behavior in any other way. The
absolute value of TBW is anyway a little bit different
Proceedings of the Seventh IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC’03)
1530-0811/03 $ 17.00 © 2003 IEEE
from user to user, and the interesting information for this
research is in the behavior of the TBW curve not in the
absolute value. The difference between horizontal lines in
the Figure 13 is one unit.
Tests showed that the impedance measurements are
very sensitive to the movements. For example wiping of
the sweat from the forehead can be clearly seen from the
measurement results. This is because two measurement
electrodes are placed to the right hand of the user and
when the sweat is wiped with the right hand, an electrical
contact between the hand and the head is established. A
distance from the head to the other electrodes in the leg is
much smaller than the distance from the hand to the leg,
and due to this the impedance on this measurement path is
also smaller. Same effect can be noticed if the test person
is lifting eyeglasses or checking the time from a
wristwatch.
7. Future work and conclusions
There is still much work to be done with the
impedance measurement system. Until now only few
persons have tested the system. For getting more data
about the behavior of the impedance in common, more
tests should be done with a numerous set of test persons.
So far all tests are done by walking. In walking the
changes of the impedance are quite slow and to see the
changes clearly the test should be at least two and half
hours long. This is a little bit too long time for a test
 person and also the capacity of the batteries in the system
districts the length of tests. Because the length of the test
cannot be made any longer, the exertion of the test should
be increased. This could be done by testing the
measurement system in different kind of sports, for
example in jogging or bicycling.
Also the test, which was done by drinking water in
every six minutes, should be repeated. If the test is
repeated and the results are similar to those achieved in
the first test, it would prove that the measurement system
really measures the changes of the body impedance.
Another way to validate the measurement results would
be to measure the weight of the test person before and
after the test. If the weight of the water consumed during
the test is also know the changes in the TBW could be
calculated from these values.
The measurement system hardware is also quite
complex at the moment, and the wiring between different
modules in the analog measurement part is not very
handy. So electronics should be at least partly redesigned.
Perhaps some modules could be combined to a same
PCB. This would make it possible to reduce the amount of
wires.
One goal is also to attach electrodes permanently to the
suit, so that the measurement system would be a really
wearable application. An ultimate achievement would be
to make the measurement system totally washable. A
washable smart clothing system would be a much more
comfort for the user, because with washable system the
user does not have to remove any parts from the system
before washing.
In this research a wearable bioimpedance measurement
system was implemented. The measurement system was
integrated to a shell suit and many tests with the system
were made.
Tests showed that the benefits achieved with a
wearable bioimpedance measurement system would be
worth of further research. In this stage the system is a
Proceedings of the Seventh IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC’03)
1530-0811/03 $ 17.00 © 2003 IEEE
little bit too complex and there is no certainty about the
measurement results.
8. Acknowledgement
We like to thank Nokia Research Center, Clothing+,
Suunto and Technology Agency of Finland for their
financial support. We also like to thank Katja who greatly
helped us in the sewing tasks.
9. References
[1] S. Grimnes and Ø.G. Martinsen, Bioimpedance &
Bioelectricity Basic, Academic Press, London, 2000.
[2] R.J. Liedtke, Fundamental of Bioelectrical Impedance
Analysis, RJL Systems – Publications,
http://rjlsystems.com/research/bia-fundamentals.html
[3] AVR microcontrollers see http://www.atmel.com
17.02.2003
[4] P.L.M. Cox-Reijven, B. Van Kreel and P.B. Soeters, Bio-
electrical impedance spectroscopy: Alternatives for the
conventional hand-to-foot measurements, Clinical
Nutrition, Elsevier Science Ltd, 21(2) 2002, pp 127-133
[5] D.P. Kotler, S. Burastero, J Wang, and R.N. Pierson,
Prediction of body cell mass, fat-free mass, and total body
water with bioelectrical impedance analysis: effects of race,
sex, and disease, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition,
The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1992, 56, pp.
936-967.
[6] S. Franco, Design with Operational Amplifiers and Analog
Integrated Circuits 2nd edition. McGraw-Hill, New York,
1998.
[7] J.W. Clark, M.R. Neuman, W.H. Olson, R.A. Peura, F.P.
Primiano, M.P. Siedband, J.G. Webster, L.A. Wheeler,
Medical Instrumentation Application and Design 3rd
edition. John Wiley & Sons, Inc, New York, 1998
[8] R. Patterson, “Bioelectric impedance measurements”.
Chapter in The Biomedical Engineering Handbook, Ed
J.D. Bronzino, CRC Press, 2000
[9] J.A. Debé, Measuring Muscle Mass and More.
http://www.drdebe.com/MUSCLE.htm 25.07.2003