Frequency analysis of wireless accelerometer and EMG sensors data: Towards discrimination of normal and asymmetric walking pattern

This preliminary study reports on the combined use of wireless accelerometers and wireless EMG sensors for monitoring walking patterns. The sensor data was analyzed in frequency domain through FFT, PSD and time-frequency spectrogram analysis. Accelerometer spectra was found to shift towards lower frequencies (<;3 Hz) while EMG spectra of selected muscles shifted towards higher frequencies (>;50 Hz) during asymmetric walking. Median frequency was used to quantify the spectral shifts. The combined wireless accelerometer/EMG system showed potential for discrimination between the normal and asymmetric walking.

[1]  Kirsi Helkala,et al.  Biometric Gait Authentication Using Accelerometer Sensor , 2006, J. Comput..

[2]  Heikki Ailisto,et al.  Identifying users of portable devices from gait pattern with accelerometers , 2005, Proceedings. (ICASSP '05). IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 2005..

[3]  G. ÓLaighin,et al.  Direct measurement of human movement by accelerometry. , 2008, Medical engineering & physics.

[4]  Wan-Young Chung,et al.  Frequency domain approach for activity classification using accelerometer , 2008, 2008 30th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society.