the CP component will only vary over a small arc, which
for all practical purposes can be considered as a straight
line.
Thus, for the analytical model, we assume that the
subject is near motionless and not attempting to move.
Small involuntary motions then will cause the NCP
component to wander along its circular locus, but since
there is not gross motion, the radius of the circle remains
essentially fixed. On top of this, the CP component will
trace out a small arc, again with essentially constant
radius. Later in the paper, we will show some experi-
mental results when the subject is purposely moving and
comment on the difficulties that this presents. In that
case, the scale of the picture in Fig. 2(b) is dynamically
changing as the subject distance and aspect angle varies.
3. Basic signal processing
3.1. Prefiltering and analog-to-digital conversion
In a practical implementation, it is necessary to digitize
the I/Q analog output signals of the complex demodulator
in Fig. 1. Since the CP component along a small arc of the
circle in Fig. 2(b) is of primary interest, it might at first
seem best to ac couple, or highpass filter, the analog
outputs to the analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), there-
by greatly reducing the dynamic range requirements and
number of bits needed for accurate representation.
Furthermore, the cutoff frequency of the highpass filter
could be made high enough to exclude most of the
respiration signal, thereby enhancing the much smaller,
and more elusive, heartbeat signal [6–11,13,14]. However,
ac coupling has two disadvantages: long settling time and
loss of possibly useful dc and low-frequency information,
as elaborated below.
It is envisaged that CP data for a given subject under
given conditions will be acquired over a time frame on the
order of 5–30 s for most applications. If ac coupling is
employed, some time must be allotted for the filter to
settle down after the subject is in position and ready to
begin the test. The settling time of a highpass filter is
roughly the inverse of its cutoff frequency. The respiration
rate for a seated subject at rest is typically in the range
of 5–20 breaths per minute (bpm), i.e., 0.083–0.33 Hz
[14, p. 206]. Therefore, with a cutoff frequency of 0.03 Hz
(as used in some of the experiments in [6,7,11]), the
settling time will be on the order of 30 s, which is long
compared to the envisaged time frames for valid data
acquisition. Increasing the cutoff frequency can reduce
this settling time, but at the expense of losing some of the
low-frequency information, as discussed next.
It will be shown in this paper that harmonics of the
fundamental respiration frequency can seriously limit
heart-rate estimation accuracy. Means for dealing with
this interference, as discussed later in Section 4, require an
estimate of the respiration rate. Therefore, the highpass
cutoff must be set below the lowest expected respiration
frequency, thereby increasing the settling time, as dis-
cussed above. Also, it is conceivable that low-frequency
data might be useful for applications in which the actual
respiration waveform could be of diagnostic interest.
Another consideration for the prefiltering is the anti-
aliasing LPF required. Heart rate for a seated subject at rest
is typically in the range of 45–90 beats per minute (bpm)
1
,
i.e., 0.75–1.5 Hz [14, p. 206]. Also, within a heartbeat
period, there is fine detail that may be of diagnostic value,
so that frequencies of 10–100 times the highest heartbeat
frequency may be of interest. Therefore, the lowpass
cutoff frequency should be on the order of 15–150 Hz,
requiring sampling rates in the range 30–300 Hz. In our
experiments, as well as in [7,8,14], sampling rates of 25
and 50 Hz were used. With activity, such as on a treadmill,
heart rate can easily increase to 120 bpm (2 Hz). (An oft-
cited rule of thumb for maximum heart rate is 220 minus
age in years.) In such applications, somewhat higher
sampling rates may be required.
In [16, 17], a calibrated dc is added to the ac signal so that
arctangent processing can be applied for cases in which
there is large subject motion. W e do not consider such cases
in m ost of this paper , but wil l present and comme nt on
some related experimental results in the final section.
For all of the above reasons, we believe that dc
coupling to the ADC is preferable to ac coupling. We can
still remove the dc after collection by subtracting out the
mean over the data block. In steady state, this is
equivalent to highpass filtering with a very low cutoff
frequency. However, subtracting out the mean after
collection avoids the transient settling time problem.
The penalty paid for dc coupling is that the ADC then
requires more bits because of the vastly increased
dynamic range. However, considering the relatively low
sampling rates, the requirements are not onerous with
today’s technology. Indeed, commercially available 24-bit
ADCs are available at relatively modest cost and small
size. Moreover, if the BG [Fig. 2(a)] is immobile, then the
BG component in Fig. 2(b) is a dc component that can be
offset prior to the ADC in order to reduce some of the
dynamic range.
3.2. Extraction of raw CP signal
Ideally, one would like to use a dc offset to reference
the data to the center of the smaller dashed circle (CP) in
Fig. 2(b). Then the desired chest-wall displacement signal
[shown as xðt Þ in Fig. 1] could be reconstructed by merely
taking the arctangent of the complex I/Q data [16].Itis
possible and desirable to offset the dc corresponding to
the BG return in Fig. 2(a), assuming that the constituent
scattering objects are not moving. However, it is difficult
to avoid the NCP component, which is necessarily induced
by voluntary or involuntary body movement. Since the
NCP component is unpredictable, we focus here on the
small CP arc, which contains the signal of interest.
If the subject is moving at a steady velocity, one can
imagine that the sum of the CP and NCP vectors in
ARTICLE IN PRESS
1
Note that ‘‘bpm’’ has also been previously used to designate
respiration ‘‘breaths per minute’’; however, the distinction should be
clear from the context.
D.R. Morgan, M.G. Zierdt / Signal Processing 89 (2009) 45–6648
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