Sensors and Actuators A 202 (2013) 147154

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Sensors and Actuators A: Physical
j our nal homepage: www. el sevi er . com/ l ocat e/ sna
Multi-sensor system with Bluetooth connectivity for non-invasive
measurements of human body physical parameters
A. Depari

, A. Flammini, S. Rinaldi, A. Vezzoli

Department of Information Engineering, University of Brescia, Via Branze 38, 25123 Brescia, Italy
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 27 October 2012
Received in revised form30 April 2013
Accepted 1 May 2013
Available online 18 May 2013
Keywords:
Photoplethysmographic sensor
Tissue impedance measurement
Wireless sensor
Portable smart sensor
Non-invasive measurement
a b s t r a c t
In the last few years, the availability of powerful personal computing devices, like smartphones, has
opened new scenarios to the so called Body Area Network (BAN), i.e., sensor networks specically
designed to monitor physical conditions of the user. The traditional methods adopted to monitor physical
parameters, like heart beat rate or exertion level, are not suitable for real-time measurements. However,
a continuous monitoring of such kind of parameters would allow the athletes to constantly control their
physical conditions, furnishing useful information to prevent overstrain and to improve their perfor-
mance. In this work, a simple, portable and low-cost system for non-invasive and real-time measurement
of physical parameters is proposed and experimentally characterized. It is composed of three units: the
sensor apparatus, electronic interface circuit, and the data transmission unit. Two different sensors are
combined in a unique structure to be placed in a clip-like fashion on the earlobe or other body part of
a person. A photoplethysmographic sensor is used to optically measure the changes of blood volume in
the arteries, thus to acquire information about heart beat, blood pressure, and arrhythmias. The second
sensor is composed of two electrodes, hence an impedance measurement of the tissue is carried out. The
impedance estimation can be used to monitor the dielectric properties of biological tissues and uids,
like blood ow. A commercial battery-operated Bluetooth earphone is used both to transmit sensor data
and to provide the power supply for the sensors and the rst conditioning electronics. Data transmission
is operated by the standard Bluetooth Hands-Free prole; therefore, sensor data can be easily acquired,
elaborated and visualized by a broad range of commercial devices. In fact, Hands-Free is the only Blue-
tooth data communication prole supported by any smartphone, from the low-cost ones to the high-end
devices. The experimental characterization of the prototype, performed by using a specically designed
application for Android smartphone systems, has demonstrated the validity of the proposed approach.
2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Monitoring physical data, particularly during sport activities,
can provide athletes with useful information about the body
response to fatigue. If the information was given in real-time, the
athlete could immediately recognize potential serious hazards for
his health, for example due to overstrain, thus reducing or inter-
rupting the activity. Moreover, training programs tailored to the
athlete characteristics may take advantage of the real-time infor-
mation, by suggesting him how to adjust the activity in order to
improve his performance. A systemable to acquire such data from
the human body must be compact, light and portable, non-invasive
andlow-power, inorder tobe battery-operatedduringoutdoor use.
Several devices are today available on the market for such pur-
poses; for instance heart rate belts are used to collect information

Corresponding author. Tel.: +39 0303715899; fax: +39 030380014.

E-mail address: alessandro.depari@ing.unibs.it (A. Depari).
from athlete body and to transmit data to smartphones or dedi-
cated devices. However, such systems are usually rather invasive
and require a careful positioning of the sensitive elements, in order
to provide meaningful results. In addition, the connection of these
sensing devices to a smartphone for data visualization requires the
use of external dongle, since typically their communication pro-
tocol is not natively supported. In [1], a new approach has been
proposed to improve the comfort and the quality of the provided
heart rate measurements. The sensor is placed on the user earlobe
and the acquired data are transmitted with wireless technology to
an end-device for data processing and visualization. Therefore, the
complexity and the cost of the sensor apparatus can be maintained
low, whereas the power consumption is comparable to the one of
the wireless transmission unit. The purpose of the present work is
to improve the system in [1], in order to collect additional phys-
ical information from the athletes body; in particular, beside the
photoplethysmographic (PPG) sensor of [1], the measurement of
the earlobe tissue impedance has been considered [2]. Data from
bothsensors are transmittedbythe same audioBluetoothinterface,
0924-4247/$ see front matter 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.sna.2013.05.001
148 A. Depari et al. / Sensors and Actuators A 202 (2013) 147154
without the need for additional processing unit. The aim is to use
the audio signal to code, thanks to simple glue logic, two biological
signals. Since data collected fromthe sensors have not particularly
privacy issues, coding and protection of transmitted data (like for
instance in [3]) have not been considered.
The PPG sensor is used to monitor modications in blood vol-
ume in the arteries, measuring the variation of the light through
the tissues [4]. The frequency of the signal provided by the sen-
sor is used to estimate the heart beat rate and to gather additional
informationfromthecharacteristics of thecardiac signal. For exam-
ple, by analyzing the heart beat variability [5,6], it is possible to
detect events that can seriously injure athletes, such as arrhyth-
mias or arterial stenosis and occlusions. The use of a second sensor,
operating with a different wavelength or, similarly, a single sen-
sor employing two different wavelengths, wouldmake possible the
estimation of the oxygen saturation in blood as well [7,8]. On the
other hand, the bio-impedance measurement is well-known in lit-
erature [9] to monitor the changes of biological tissue properties,
like for example ions concentrationdue tophysical effort. The mon-
itoring of such properties may help the athlete to understand the
body response to the current activity and, in accordance, to adjust
his physical effort. In the present work, the measurement of the
earlobe tissue impedance is achieved by encapsulating two elec-
trodes in the clip support of the PPG sensor. By doing this, the size
and weight of the sensor unit applied on the athlete earlobe are not
substantially increased.
Data transmission takes advantage of the well-known and
widespread Bluetooth wireless technology, which is already used
in several applications for collecting sensor data [10,11]. In fact,
Bluetooth is natively available in almost all portable devices, such
as smartphones and tablets, which, in addition, are the best can-
didates for the data elaboration and visualization, thanks to the
presence of relatively high computational resources and of a touch
screen for the user interaction. Other communication technologies
typically adopted to collect data from sensors, like Wi-Fi [12] and
IEEE802.15.4 [13], present limitations regarding the power con-
sumptions (Wi-Fi) andthe support bysmartphones (IEEE802.15.4).
Other interesting approaches, like the one proposed in [14], are not
suitable for the proposed application, since the sensors are con-
nected externally to the earlobe.
Lately, Bluetooth has been adopted for data transmission also
in sensor systems for sport activities, thus making possible a direct
communication link with the user smartphone. However, compat-
ibility issues arise from this approach; in fact, Bluetooth standard
denes a broad set of communication proles, oriented for data
as well as audio (streaming) transmission, differently supported
by the most widespread devices on the market (Android, iOS, Win-
dows Phone terminals). Currently, the only prole implemented by
all the devices is the Hands-Free Prole (HFP), mainly usedfor com-
munication with commercial headsets. The HFP solution has been
chosen for data communication, to assure the full compatibility of
the proposed sensor systems with the most available end-devices.
This led to the need of implementing an effective rst conditioning
electronics for sensor data, which will be deeply described in the
following.
For demonstrative purposes, a data acquisition and user inter-
face programme has been implemented in Android environment.
However, being the proposed solution independent of the used
end-device, the development of applications for other terminals
equipped with different operating systems is facilitated [1].
2. The proposed system
The proposed system is composed of three units, as illustrated
in Fig. 1. The Sensor unit includes the sensors applied on the user
Fig. 1. Block scheme of the overall system; the circled part is the proposed solution
for data measurement and transmission.
earlobe for the physical data measurement. The analog front-end
provides proper sensor excitation signals and implements the rst
conditioning electronics of sensor data. Moreover, as detailedinthe
following, it furnishes data to transmit to the Transmission unit in a
suitable format. The latter is devoted to the Bluetooth transmission
of data; to speed up the design process, a commercial Bluetooth
earphone, able to transmit audio data, has been used for this pur-
pose. The battery of the earphone is used to power also the other
two units of the system.
Transmitted data can be acquired by any device with Bluetooth
capabilities. In order to demonstrate the validity of the proposed
sensor system, a smartphone equippedwithAndroidhas beenused
as the end-device. A suitable software (App) has been developed to
show the acquired data and to save them as an audio le for fur-
ther off-line analysis. In the following, the three units of the sensor
system will be detailed, whereas the smartphone App description
will be included in Section 3.
2.1. Sensor unit
The sensor unit consists of an optical PPG sensor and two elec-
trodes for the impedance measurement. The utilized PPG sensor
adopts the transmissive technique and thus it is composed of a
phototransistor and a photodiode to be placed face-to-face, with
the target tissue in the middle. The photodiode emits an infrared
beam which is detected by the phototransistor once the light has
crossed the target tissue. An increase of blood volume in the tissue
determines a decrease of the light received by the phototransistor;
therefore, an electric signal following the behaviour of the blood
volume can be acquired. Several details can be obtained by using
thephotoplethysmographic waveform. Asingleperiodis composed
of two peaks separated by a small dip, called Dicrotic Notch; it
represents the closure of the aorta with the end of systole, fol-
lowed by the beginning of the diastole. The complete cardiac cycle
can be used for the heart beat rate estimation. Moreover, recent
works [5,6] illustrate that is possible to evaluate the occurrence
of arrhythmias or arterial stenosis and occlusions from the heart
rate variability. The two sensor components of the PPG, that is the
phototransistor or photodiode, have been placed in the middle of
two copper rings acting as electrodes for the impedance measure-
ment. Each electrode has the form of a circular ring with 1mm
thickness. The diameters of the outer and inner circumferences of
the rings are 10mmand 5mm, respectively. Electrical connections
of the PPG sensor are assured by means of suitable hollows in the
metallic rings. The attraction force of two magnets has been used
to keep the rings in contact with the two sides of the earlobe and to
A. Depari et al. / Sensors and Actuators A 202 (2013) 147154 149
Fig. 2. The implemented prototype of the Sensor unit.
guarantee a good alignment between the two sensor components.
Two cylindrical magnets with circumference equal to the electrode
outer one and thickness of 2mm have been glued to the rear of
each electrode; the magnet pole orientation has been suitably cho-
sen to make the rings attracting each others when the two PPG
components are face-to-face. A picture of the realized sensor unit
prototype is shown in Fig. 2. Compared to the solution adopted
in [1], where a clip has been used to sustain the PPG, the mag-
net approach makes the alignment of the PPG sensor components
slightly more critical; nevertheless, it guarantees a more effective
electrode contact with the tissue. Easiness of application on the
target (e.g., earlobe) and removal are however assured.
It shouldbe noticedthat the electrodes are indirect contact with
the skin and therefore an electric current can owthrough the tis-
sue. However, being the systemlow-voltage and battery-operated,
this does not represent a risk for the human target. For improved
safety, the electrodes can be covered with an insulating lm: two
capacitive components 2C
i
, due to the insulator, are introduced in
series to the tissue impedance Z
t
, as shown in Fig. 3. The overall
effect is a capacitive component C
i
in series with Z
t
, which makes
the measured impedance Z
tot
to be as described in (1).
Z
tot
= Z
t
+
1
j2fC
i
= Re(Z
t
) +j

Im(Z
t
)
1
2fC
i

(1)
Also in the case when the insulator lmis applied, the informa-
tion about the tissue impedance Z
t
can be nevertheless obtained
fromthe estimation of Z
tot
and the knowledge of C
i
.
2.2. Analog front-end
The sensors need to be properly excited and sensor output sig-
nals have to be suitably conditioned before transmission; these
tasks are performed by the electronic circuits implemented in the
Fig. 3. The equivalent model of the impedance sensor when the electrodes are
covered with insulating lms.
V
cc

PPG
R
D
R
C

V
PPG

V
C

C
HP
R
HP
C
LP
R
LP1
R
LP2
OA
C
ST
R
HP
R
ST
Q
Prescaler
C
t

(C
tot
)
ST
V
ST
V
PPG
V
BT

V
Car
(a)
(b)
Fig. 4. (a) The polarization and rst conditioning electronics for the PPG sensor. (b)
The impedance measurement and modulation circuits.
analog front-end. The PPGsensor, as illustratedbefore, is composed
of a photodiode and a phototransistor; a simple polarization circuit
is realized by means of the two resistors R
D
and R
C
, as in Fig. 4(a).
The heart beat waveform V
C
from the optical sensor has very low
amplitude and it is rather noisy. The maximumamplitude of V
C
is
on the order of fewmillivolts and it has a DC offset. Altering stage,
composed of a rst order high-pass lter (R
HP
and C
HP
) is used to
remove the DC offset, whereas an amplifying stage, composed of
an active rst order low-pass lter (OA, R
LP1
, R
LP1
, and C
LP
, cut fre-
quency of about 5Hz), has been used to preprocess V
C
, obtaining
the V
PPG
signal.
The circuit dedicated to the tissue impedance estimation, by
means of the implemented electrodes, takes advantage of the fact
that the earlobe impedance can be approximated as a pure capac-
itive component, when the operating frequency is over a certain
value (about 20kHz). This consideration will be better detailed
in Section 3. Therefore, the measurement of Z
t
(or Z
tot
, in case of
insulating lm) merely becomes the estimation of the capacitive
component C
t
(C
tot
), thus a simple rst conditioning electronics can
be implemented. As stated before, a commercial Bluetooth device
able to transmit an audio signal will be used. For that reason, a
single signal in the voice bandwidth carrying both the informa-
tion related to the PPG and impedance sensor need to be provided
to the Transmission unit. In [1], a simple method based on signal
modulation with a constant-frequency and square waveform car-
rier has been used to shift the PPG signal in the audio bandwidth,
thus making it suitable for transmission with the adopted Blue-
tooth device. In this work, a similar approach has been followed;
in fact, information about the tissue capacitance has been coded in
the modulating carrier frequency. In this way, a sort of combina-
tion between a pulse-frequency modulation and pulse-amplitude
modulation is obtained and information related to both sensors is
combined to create a single audio signal.
An oscillator circuit based on a Schmidt Trigger logic gate is
used to generate the tissue-capacitance-dependent square wave-
formV
ST
, as showninFig. 4(b). Theoscillator operates at afrequency
greater than 20kHz, in order to consider valid the aforementioned
approximation of target impedance as a pure capacitive compo-
nent; this frequency value is however out of the useful audio
bandwidth. Thus, V
ST
is not appropriate to be directly used as the
modulation carrier, but it needs to be processed by a Prescaler, to
reducethefrequencyintotheaudioband. Eventually, thePPGsignal
modulation is performed by means of a chopper circuit, consisting
150 A. Depari et al. / Sensors and Actuators A 202 (2013) 147154
of the MOS transistor Q controlled by the square waveform V
Car
.
Resuming, the obtainedsingle signal V
BT
, whichis inthe audio band
and thus can be directly acquired by the Transmission unit, carries
the information about the PPG sensor in the amplitude and data
related to the target capacitance in the frequency.
2.3. Transmission unit
Modernpersonal devices, like smartphones andtablets, are usu-
allyequippedwithdifferent communicationinterfaces, for instance
USB, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. In comparison with other technologies,
Bluetooth has several advantages, such as simple communication
stack, safe communication channel, and availability of low-cost
and low-power devices [19]. For these reasons, Bluetooth is typ-
ically employed to provide communication with add-on devices,
like earphones, headsets, game devices and many more. Lately, a
new release of Bluetooth standard is available, the so called Blue-
tooth Low Energy (BLE) [15], which is also known with the name
Bluetooth Smart. Typically this protocol is adopted for the devel-
opment of sensors network [16], where the power consumption
is one of the main design parameters, like in medical and tness
appliances [17]. Nevertheless, despite its lowpower consumption,
comparable to other very lowpower technology like IEEE 802.15.a
[18], this solution cannot be employed in the proposed approach,
since a prole for the continuous transmission of data streamis not
available. In addition, only high-end devices are equipped with BLE
at present time, limiting its compatibility, which is one of the main
advantages of the proposed approach.
There are several Bluetooth proles available for data as well as
audio communication; however, not all of them are implemented
by the operating systems adopted in smartphones and tablets. For
instance, Android supports some of the proles (data and audio)
provided by the standard, whereas iOS implements other proles
(HFP 1.5, PBAP, A2DP, AVRCP, PAN, HID) not compatible with the
previous ones.
The audio Hands-Free Prole (HFP) has been selected for the
transmission of the sensor signal, because it is supported by the
most of the devices on the market (included Android, iOS sys-
tems and Windows Phone 8) and due to the easy recovery of the
transmitted sensor data at applicationlevel. The Hands-Free Prole
denes how a headset (Hands-Free Unit) can be interfaced with
an audio gateway device (e.g., smartphone, tablet, and more),
for transmitting or receiving audio signals. The monaural audio
channel is transmitted over the Synchronous Connection-Oriented
(SCO) link using Continuously Variable Slope Delta Modulation
(CVSD) or a Pulse Code Modulation (PCM). It should be noted
that only one audio connection per time is supported between
the Hands-Free unit and the audio gateway; if data from multi-
ple sensors need to be transmitted, it is necessary to combine the
information to forma single analog signal.
Among the available commercial devices operating with the
Hands-Free prole, a low-cost earphone, the Essential Headset
fromCellular Line, has been used. The earphone circuit has been
modied by introducing an electronic switch; this allows the user
to select data to transmit to the end-device, that is the sensor sig-
nal provided by the analog front-end or the integrated microphone
signal. Hence, the modied earphone can be used for monitoring
purposes as well as like a traditional earphone. Thus, the proposed
measurement systemcould be easily integrated in headsets avail-
able on the market.
3. Systemexperimental characterization
An HP 4194A impedance analyser has been used to test the tis-
sue impedance estimation feature. In Fig. 5, the magnitude and the
0.00E+00
1.25E+02
2.50E+02
3.75E+02
5.00E+02
20000 16000 12000 8000 4000 0
Frequency (Hz)
Z
t

M
a
g

(
k

)
-80
-40
0
20000 16000 12000 8000 4000 0
Frequency (Hz)
Z
t

P
h
a
s
e

(
D
e
g
)
(a)
(b)
Fig. 5. The magnitude (a) and phase (b) of the earlobe impedance Zt measured
with the proposed sensor (without insulating lm) and acquired with an impedance
analyser.
phase of the earlobe impedance measured with the sensor applied
to a person in normal conditions are shown. In this case, the elec-
trodes have been applied without the insulating lm, therefore the
graphs are related to the actual tissue impedance Z
t
. It should be
noticed that when the frequency increases, the impedance phase
decreases towards 90

, thus indicating that a capacitive compo-

nent C
t
is becoming more and more signicant. If the measurement
is performed with a frequency greater than about 20kHz, the tis-
sueimpedancecanbemodelledbyusingonlytheimaginarypart or,
equivalently, by utilizing a capacitive component C
t
, as described
in (2).
Z
t
= Re(Z
t
) +j(Im(Z
t
)) j(Im(Z
t
)) = j
1
2fC
t
(2)
Similarly, when the insulating lm is used between the tissue
and the electrodes, the total impedance Z
tot
can be modelled by
using only the imaginary part, which is related to a capacitive com-
ponent C
tot
, depending on C
t
and C
i
as in (3) and (4).
Z
tot
j(Im(Z
tot
)) = j

Im(Z
t
)
1
2fC
i

= j

1
2fC
t
+
1
2fC
i

= j
1
2fC
tot
(3)
1
C
tot
=
1
C
t
+
1
C
i
(4)
In Fig. 6, the acquisition of Z
tot
performed with the impedance
analyser is shown. It is worth noting that the behaviour starts to
be substantially capacitive at operating frequencies lower than in
the previous case; this is due to the predominance of the capacitive
effect C
i
of the insulator.
In order not to lose sensitivity in the measurement of the target
impedance, it is important to accurately select the material for the
insulator lm; inparticular, estimatedvalues withthe realizedsen-
sor prototype are C
i
10pF and C
t
1pF with operating frequency
of about 100kHz.
A TCZT8020-PAER device produced by Vishay semiconductor
has been adopted as the PPG sensor [20]. The main characteris-
tics are: 950nm beam wavelength, 60mA nominal current and
A. Depari et al. / Sensors and Actuators A 202 (2013) 147154 151
-120
-80
-40
0
20000 16000 12000 8000 4000 0
Frequency (Hz)
Z
t
o
t

P
h
a
s
e

(
D
e
g
)
0
40000
80000
120000
160000
20000 16000 12000 8000 4000 0
Frequency (Hz)
Z
t
o
t

M
a
g

(
k

)
(a)
(b)
Fig. 6. The magnitude (a) and phase (b) of the earlobe impedance Ztot measured
with the proposed sensor (with insulating lm) and acquired with an impedance
analyser.
1.25V forward voltage of infrared led, 250A current required
by the phototransistor. A digital scope acquisition of the non-
ltered sensor output (V
C
of Fig. 4(a)) is shown in Fig. 7; the
signal is rather noisy, even though the heart beat is already distin-
guishable. A digital scope acquisition of the obtained PPG ltered
signal (V
PPG
of Fig. 4(a)) is shown in Fig. 8. From V
PPG
, informa-
tion about beat rate, steepness of systole phase, its amplitude
and period, localization of Dicrotic notch and the presence of the
diastole phase can be easily obtained. A low-power operational
amplier (Texas Instruments LM358, with supply current of about
5A, at 3.3V) has been used for the active lter implementa-
tion.
The oscillation frequency of the Schmidt Trigger circuit of
Fig. 4(b) has been tuned between 70kHz and 100kHz, to operate
inside the optimal response bandwidth of the tissue impedance.
The Prescaler has been implemented by using an 8-bit digital
counter, lowering the oscillator output V
ST
frequency of a factor of
256; the nal frequency value is between about 270Hz and 400Hz,
in accordance with the required band for the audio signal to be
transmitted [1]. A detail of V
PPG
and modulated PPG signal (V
BT
of
Fig. 4(b)) is showninFig. 9. For this stage, a 74HC14Schmidt Trigger
integrated circuit and a 74HC393 counter, both fromTexas Instru-
ments and powered at 3.3V, have been used. The modulation is
achieved by a simple 2N7002 N-MOS transistor.
All the components have been selected in order to reduce size
and power consumption, thus obtaining a compact and low-power
device, suitable for battery-powered operations. Globally, the sys-
tem requires less than 45mA at 3.3V, almost equally distributed
betweenthe Bluetoothearphone andthe analog front-end. The ear-
phone battery has a capacity of 50mAh, thus the cycle battery life
of the overall systemis approximately 70min.
To validate the proposed approach and to provide an example
of application for a portable device, a demonstrative App has been
developedfor anAndroidsmartphone. The Apptasks are toacquire,
store, elaborate, and show the sensor signals. Data acquisition is
simplied by the use of the Bluetooth interface functions provided
by the smartphone operating system; then, raw data are saved
as audio les (wave format) in the smartphone memory, for an
optional off-line post elaboration. The processing of data includes
the demodulation of the acquired audio signal, in order to extract
informationof the PPGsignal shape andto the carrier period, which
is related to the tissue impedance. Moreover, a simple evaluation
of the heart beat rate is performed. Obtained data are then visual-
ized on the smartphone screen, as illustrated by a screenshot of the
developed App in Fig. 10.
Fig. 7. Digital scope acquisition of the non-ltered PPG sensor output (V
C
of Fig. 4(a)).
152 A. Depari et al. / Sensors and Actuators A 202 (2013) 147154
Fig. 8. Digital scope acquisition of the ltered PPG sensor output (V
PPG
of Fig. 4(a)).
Inorder tovalidate the elaborationimplementedby the App, the
same operations performed by the smartphone have been repro-
duced in Matlab environment and off-line applied to the stored
data les. Fig. 11 shows a complete acquisition, where the red and
blue lines represent the PPG signal and the period of the carrier
(related to the sensor impedance), respectively. Data acquisition
has been performed before and during a sport activity; varia-
tions of heart beat rate as well as of the tissue impedance can
be recognized, thus demonstrating the validity of the proposed
approach.
Fig. 9. Digital scope acquisition of the ltered (V
PPG
of Fig. 4(a)) and modulated (VBT of Fig. 4(b)) PPG sensor output.
A. Depari et al. / Sensors and Actuators A 202 (2013) 147154 153
Fig. 10. Screenshot of the demo App implemented for an Android smartphone.
Fig. 11. Off-line elaboration of an acquired le during a test of the system.
4. Conclusions
Non-invasive and real-time measurement of physical parame-
ters requires a simple, portable and lowcost systemable to collect
the information without interfering with athletic training. A sys-
tem composed of a Bluetooth earphone equipped with a PPG and
tissue impedance sensors, to be applied on the earlobe of the ath-
lete, has been proposed. Thanks to an effective processing of the
sensor data, an audio signal, suitable to be transmitted with Blue-
tooth earphones operating with the standard Hands-Free prole,
can be obtained. Therefore, a broad range of portable devices, such
as smartphones and tablets, can be used to acquire the sensor sig-
nal, for real-time processing, data visualization, and user interface.
Data obtained from the estimation of the heart beat rate and the
earlobe impedance can be used to provide to the athlete real-time
information concerning the response of the body to the fatigue,
thus allowing themto adjust his activity, avoiding health risks and
to improve his performance. The multi-sensor prototype described
andcharacterizedinthepaper, alongwithademoapplicationfor an
Android smartphone, have demonstrated the feasibility of the pro-
posed approach, monitoring the cardiac signal and the variations
of human tissue impedance due to physical effort.
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Biographies
Alessandro Depari was born in Italy, in 1976. He received the Laurea degree in
Electronics Engineering and the Ph.D. degree in Electronic Instrumentation from
the University of Brescia, Brescia, Italy, in 2002 and 2006, respectively. Since 2007,
he has been an Assistant Professor (Researcher) with the Department of Informa-
tion Engineering, University of Brescia. He is co-author of more than 50 scientic
papers publishedoninternational journals andconferenceproceedings. His research
interests are in the areas of signal conditioning and processing for chemical sensors,
particularly resonant and resistive sensors for articial olfactory systems, the devel-
opment of sensor networks for distributedmeasurement, andthe designof methods
and digital electronic circuits for numeric measurement instrumentation.
154 A. Depari et al. / Sensors and Actuators A 202 (2013) 147154
Alessandra Flammini was born in Brescia, Italy, in 1960. She received the M.Sc.
degree (with honours) in physics fromthe University of Rome, Rome, Italy, in 1985.
From1985 to 1995, she was involved with industrial research and development on
digital drive control. Currently, she is with the Department of Information Engineer-
ing, University of Brescia, Brescia, Italy, where she was a Researcher from 1995 to
2002 and has been an Associate Professor since 2002. She teaches several courses
about measurements in industrial environments and digital electronic systems. Her
main research activity includes embedded systems, measurement instrumentation,
sensor signal processing, smart sensors, wired and wireless sensor networking, syn-
chronization and smart grids.
Stefano Rinaldi was born in Seriate, Italy, in 1982. He received the degree with
honours in electronics engineering in 2006 and the Ph.D. degree in electronic
instrumentation in 2010 from the University of Brescia, Brescia, Italy. His main
research activities are focused on performance analysis of industrial network,
wireless sensor network, smart sensors, real-time Ethernet, eldbus applications,
synchronization methods, FPGA SoC design, and Linux-embedded software devel-
opment.
Angelo Vezzoli was born in Chiari in 1983. He graduated in Electronics Engineering
at University of Brescia in 2010 with a thesis titled triassial accelerometer with USB
communication. In 2010 he held research grant at University of Brescia on a project
of development of hybrid network: wired and wireless. Currently, he studies for
Ph.D. course in Electronic Sensors and Instrumentation at University of Brescia. The
main themes of his researches are about smart metering, protocols and systems of
communication on smart metering scenario.