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Capacitively coupled ECG sensor using a single electrode with adaptive power-
line noise cancellation

Conference Paper · February 2016

DOI: 10.1109/BHI.2016.7455872

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 Capacitively Coupled ECG Sensor using a Single Electrode
with Adaptive Power-Line Noise Cancellation*
Yuta Kawamoto, Shintaro Izumi, Member, IEEE, Yoshito Tanaka, Student Member, IEEE,
Hiroshi Kawaguchi, Member, IEEE, and Masahiko Yoshimoto, Member, IEEE

related to the hemoglobin concentration variation of blood.



Abstract— This report describes a small heartbeat

monitoring system using capacitively coupled ECG sensors. This type of sensor does not entail electrical contact, but it
Capacitively coupled sensors using an insulated electrode have requires direct skin contact for light exposure and for the
been proposed to obtain ECG signals without pasting electrodes reflected light detection. Power consumption is also a
directly onto the skin. Although the sensors have better usability shortcoming of PPG sensors because the LED requires at least
than conventional ECG sensors, it is difficult to remove noise 10 mA. Although recent PPG sensors use intermittent LEDs,
contamination. Power-line noise can be a severe noise source they still use several milliamperes of current, on average.
that increases when only a single electrode is used. However, a
multiple electrode system degrades usability. To address this To avoid direct skin contact during ECG measurement, a
problem, we propose a noise cancellation technique using an capacitively coupled noncontact measurement method has
adaptive noise feedback approach, which can improve the been proposed [4–6]. This method can record the ECG signal
availability of the capacitive ECG sensor using a single electrode. through insulators such as clothing (see Fig. 1). The electrode,
An instrumental amplifier is used in the proposed method for which is capacitively coupled to the human body, can record
the first stage amplifier instead of voltage follower circuits. A the biopotential from the heart. Various applications have
microcontroller predicts the noise waveform from an ADC been developed using the capacitively coupled sensor: it can
output. To avoid saturation caused by power-line noise, the be implemented for a chair [7], a bathtub [8], a lavatory seat
predicted noise waveform is fed back to an amplifier input [9], and a driver seat [10].
through a DAC. We implemented the prototype sensor system
to evaluate the noise reduction performance. Measurement A salient concern related to the capacitively coupled
results using a prototype board show that the proposed method sensor is strong noise contamination. Therefore, a
can suppress 28-dB power-line noise. noise-reduction technique for these sensors is proposed here to
achieve both usability and availability of ECG measurements.
I. INTRODUCTION
Electrocardiography (ECG) and instantaneous heart rate
(HR) are important bio-signals used for heart disease detection,
heart rate variation analysis, and exercise intensity estimation. Electrode
Recently, long-term (24 hr) ECG and other biosignal
monitoring systems using paste-type wearable devices have Vheart CE
been developed [1-3].
Conventional ECG and HR monitors present shortcomings
in terms of usability. These systems require pasting of wet Vout
electrodes directly onto the skin. Dry type electrodes have Cin Rin
been developed to replace wet type electrodes, but they should Insulator
be contacted electrically to the skin. These electrodes also
affect the sensor device size. At least two electrodes are
necessary to measure ECG. Moreover, the minimum required
distance to detect sufficient voltage difference between the
electrode centers is 4 cm or more. These difficulties have
hindered the progress of wearable sensors. Figure 1. Capacitively coupled ECG sensor overview [11].
(a) (b)
Photoplethysmographic (PPG) sensors, which have been
used in watch-type wearable sensors to detect HR, consist of Analog Digital
LEDs and photodetectors. The HR can be calculated from filter IA ADC
filter
movements, which cause changes in light reflected from
human skin and blood vessel, which include information Noise
DAC
Rin and Cin prediction
degradation
*This research was partially supported by the Ministry of Economy,
Trade and Industry (METI) and the New Energy an Industrial Technology Figure 2. Noise reduction approach: (a) Conventional analog
Development Organization (NEDO). filter, and (b) Proposed method.
Y. Kawamoto, S. Izumi, Y. Tanaka, H. Kawaguchi, and M. Yoshimoto
are with the Graduate School of System Informatics, Kobe University, 1-1
Rokkodai, Nada, Kobe, Hyogo 657-8501, Japan (e-mail:
shin@cs28.cs.kobe-u.ac.jp).
 VDD/2
Instrumentation Amplifier (IA)
R1 R1=1G,R2=100k,R3=5.1k,
OPA349 R4=R5=R6=R7=R8=R9=10k,
VDD/2
Insulated C1=1F
R6 R8
electrode R4 OPA349
16
R3 ADC

R5 R7 LPF ADS1115 Micro-

R9 (FC=200) (780sps) controller
OPA349
R2 8
DAC
VDD/2 C1
AD5330
Figure 3. Proposed architecture using noise feedback for capacitively coupled ECG sensor.
[V]
LPF Application 2 IA output DAC output Peak Filter Electrode input
(FC: 45 Hz) Program 1.5
60 Hz 1
ADC Peak
(780 sps) Filter 0.5

Z-1 0
(IA Gain)-1
-0.5
DAC Z-12 0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1
Time[s]
Figure 4. Digital filter for power-line noise prediction.
Figure 6. Simulation result of noise reduction.

a3 (a) (b)
Sensor MCU
Z-1 Front

40mm
45mm

a1
End
Data
ADC

a1=1.703
Z-1
a2=0.924
a3=0.038
a2 a4
a4=0.038
Figure 5. 60 Hz peak filter.
II. CONVENTIONAL CAPACITIVE CENSOR
To detect biopotential using the insulated electrode, very
high input impedance and small input capacitance (Rin and Cin
in Fig. 1) are necessary for the first stage amplifier. Generally,
a voltage follower circuit with very high input impedance
amplifier (> 1T) and a high bias resistance (> 1G) is used.
Many noises can cause strong interference for capacitive
ECG sensors. Body motion artifacts and the environmental
electrical field interference are the primary causes [12]. This
work specifically examines power-line interference. Because
the first-stage amplifier is expected to have very high input
impedance, it is contaminated easily and to a great degree by
power-line noise. Unfortunately, implementing an analog
filter for the power-line noise frequency range in front of the
first stage amplifier is difficult because of requirements for
high impedance and low capacitance input (see Fig.2 (a)). This
Logger
Bias
60mm
55mm
Figure 7. (a) Prototype sensor board, and (b) Insulated
electrode.
constraint causes saturation problems for the first stage
amplifier.
To address this problem, differential input and signal
injection approaches have been proposed in earlier works
[13]. However, these require multiple electrodes, which spoil
the usability benefits of capacitively coupled sensors.
In contrast, our proposed method requires only one
electrode. The estimated noise waveform and DAC are used
to mitigate the power-line noise in the first-stage amplifier.
III. PROPOSED METHOD
To eliminate power-line noise, we use an instrumental
amplifier (IA) for the first stage of the sensor. Fig. 3 presents
a block diagram of the proposed system. The insulated
electrode and the bias resistance are connected to an IA input.
The predicted noise waveform is generated by the DAC and
 Oscilloscope (a) 3

Signal 2

generator IA
IA ADC

[V]
1

MCU 0 DAC output

IA output
DAC -1
5 5.01 5.02 5.03 5.04 5.05 5.06 5.07 5.08 5.09 5.1
Time [s]
(b)
Figure 8. Experimental setup for 60-Hz sine wave 3

reduction. 2

the microcontroller, which are connected to another input of

[V]
1
IA. The IA output is input to the LPF and ADC. The IA also
contributes to suppression of the bias voltage fluctuation 0 DAC output
IA output
[14]. -1
15 15.01 15.02 15.03 15.04 15.05 15.06 15.07 15.08 15.09 15.1
Time [s]
The microcontroller predicts the power-line noise (c)100
waveform using ADC output. Because the power-line noise w/ DAC feedback

Signal power of IA output [dB]

frequency is already known as 50 Hz or 60 Hz, its waveform 50
w/o DAC feedback

can be predicted using the ADC output. Under most -28dB

circumstances, the phase and amplitude of the power-line 0

noise are almost identical to those waveforms that occurred
one period prior. Therefore, the noise waveform can be -50
predicted using previous ADC outputs.
We implemented the digital filter using the -100
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000
microcontroller to predict the power-line noise continuously. Frequency [Hz]
Fig. 4 shows details of the filters. Here, we assume 60-Hz
Figure 9. Measurement result with 400-mVPP 60-Hz sine
power-line noise and a 780-Hz sampling rate ADC operation.
wave: (a) w/o DAC feedback, (b) w/ DAC feedback,
A 60-Hz peak filter, as portrayed in Fig. 5, is implemented to
extract the noise component from the sum of the ADC output and (c) Signal power comparison.
(a)
and the previous DAC output, which indicate the insulated 3

electrode output. The peak filter outputs are stored to 2

registers to generate the DAC output.
[V]

1
Fig. 6 presents an illustration of the simulation result of 0
the proposed noise reduction. Here, the IA gain is set to unity DAC output
IA output
(0 dB). The 60-Hz power-line noise amplitude is set to 800 -1
5 5.01 5.02 5.03 5.04 5.05 5.06 5.07 5.08 5.09 5.1
mVPP. The single power supply voltage of IA is set to 2.5 V. (b)
Time [s]

As presented in Fig. 6, the 60-Hz frequency component of the 3

power-line noise in the IA output is suppressed from 800 2

mVPP to less than 200 mVPP within 100 ms. Although high
[V]

1
frequency noise around 780-Hz is issued because of the ADC
sampling rate, the LPF in front of the ADC can suppress it 0 DAC output
IA output
easily. -1
15 15.01 15.02 15.03 15.04 15.05 15.06 15.07 15.08 15.09 15.1
The proposed method can suppress power-line noise (c)100
Time [s]

without degradation of the input capacitance or the input w/ DAC feedback

Signal power of IA output [dB]

impedance because this method requires no analog filter in 50

w/o DAC feedback
front of the first-stage amplifier (IA). Even if the gain of the -28dB

IA is greater than 0 dB, the proposed method can still prevent 0

saturation caused by the noise.
-50
IV. PERFORMANCE EVALUATION
To evaluate the proposed method, a prototype sensor -100
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000
board is implemented as portrayed in Fig. 7. As presented in Frequency [Hz]
Fig. 3, the proposed sensor consists of sensor front end
circuits a 16-bit resolution  ADC (ADS1115; Texas Figure 10. Measurement result with 1-VPP 60-Hz sine
Instruments Inc.), an 8-bit resolution DAC (AD5330; Analog wave; (a) w/o DAC feedback, (b) w/ DAC feedback, and
Devices Inc.), and an 8-bit 8-MHz MCU (Arduino Pro Mini; (c) signal power comparison.
SparkFun). The sensor front end, which has 2.5 V single
supply voltage, consists mainly of an IA circuit using
operational amplifiers (OPA349; Texas Instruments Inc.).
The gain of IA is set to 14 dB.
 First, the noise reduction performance was verified using
a signal generator (SG) as portrayed in Fig. 8. The SG output
60-Hz sine wave with 400 mVPP and 2.2 VPP. Figs. 9 and 10
present the measurement results. Then, the DAC output and
the IA output are observed simultaneously. When the DAC Sensor &
feedback is enabled, the 60-Hz frequency component is Electrode
suppressed about 28 dB. In contrast, the high frequency
component at 780  60 Hz is increased when the DAC
feedback is enabled. These high-frequency components are
suppressed sufficiently by the LPF in front of ADC. The
prototype sensor board suppresses the 60-Hz sine wave with
the same performance as that of the simulation result.
Next, to evaluate the performance of the proposed system,
Figure 11. Experimental setup for ECG measurement.
we conducted ECG measurement from a human body using
the prototype sensor board. This experiment was conducted
in a laboratory, which is not shielded. The sensor board is (a) w/o DAC feedback w/ DAC feedback
pasted on the clothing surface as presented in Fig. 11. 3

ADC output [V]

2
Fig. 12 presents the measured waveform of the ECG. In
this experiment, the DAC output was fixed to 1.25 V (VDD / 1

2) in the first 10 s. Subsequently the proposed feedback 0

scheme was activated. As presented in Fig. 12(a), the
-1
saturation of IA was prevented using the DAC feedback. Fig. 0 2 4 6 8 10
Time [s]
12 14 16 18

12(b) shows the LPF output, which has a 45-Hz cut-off

3 3
frequency (see Fig. 6). Although the partial heart beat is

ADC output [V]

ADC output [V]

visible with saturation, some degradation of its amplitude 2 2

and peaks occurs. 1 1

0 0
V. CONCLUSION
-1 -1
2 3 4 5 11 12 13 14
In this work, we proposed power-line noise cancellation Time [s] Time [s]
(b)
method using the instrumental amplifier and the adaptive 1.3 1.3
noise feedback for the capacitively coupled ECG sensor. The

LPF output [V]

LPF output [V]

1.25 1.25
measurement result using the prototype sensor board shows
that 28-dB power-line noise reduction is achieved without Rin 1.2 1.2

and Cin degradation. Evaluation results indicate that the 1.15 1.15
proposed method can improve both of the availability and the
1.1 1.1
usability of healthcare devices. 2 3
Time [s]
4 5 11 12
Time [s]
13 14

Figure 12. Measurement result of ECG; (a) ADC output,

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