Wearables as second galvanic skins

Steve Taranovich - November 24, 2015

The wearables market for health and fitness is growing quickly. This article will highlight some of
the innovative and educational information available there in the industry right now that will help
designers understand theory as well as tools for design in this arena.

I will start off with a recent visit that I had to Maxim Integrated. I was taken on a tour of their demo
lab. During the tour I was pleasantly surprised that among the many demos on display, two of them
were very important health and fitness wearables with which designers could shorten their design
time and get their product to market quickly.

Before we discuss the tools for the designer, let’s get a grasp on what some of the latest important
techniques, theory and electronics technologies that have made these wearable devices possible in
our everyday life.

Galvanic Skin Response (GSR)

Galvanic Skin Response (GSR)1 is one electrodermal response (EDR) among many. An EDR is a
change in the electrical properties of human skin caused by the interaction of environmental events
and the person’s psychological state. The body’s skin is a pretty good electrical conductor. When a
small electrical current is administered to the skin, there are changes in its conduction which can be
measured. We can measure several variables such as skin resistance or skin conductance, its
reciprocal. So if we use Ohm’s Law, the R is skin resistance which equals the voltage (V) applied
between two electrodes on the skin divided by the electrical current (I) that passes through the skin
or R= V/I as we learned in EE101. See Figure 1 for a typical GSR skin response to a stimulation.
 Figure 1: A typical GSR response

GSR also has applications in medical treatment, lie detection as well as wellness monitoring.
 Figure 2: Here is a mobile app GUI screenshot from the MAXREFDES73#, a wearable, battery-
operated mobile galvanic skin response (GSR) system featuring the MAX32600 wellness
measurement microcontroller. (Image courtesy of Maxim Integrated)

The MAXREFDES73# is
featured in EDN's Hot
100 products of 2015.
See all 100 here.
The GSR amplifier

A key to GSR is the Féré effect, which is the change in skin conductivity when a subject is
stimulated.

The role of the GSR amplifier is to apply a constant voltage to the skin, which not even perceived by
the wearer since it is so small. This is done through tiny electrodes. Current then flows through the
skin and is detected by a receiver, processed and used to display various parameters to the user.

The amplifier’s output voltage needs to be constant and is known so that once the current flow in the
skin is measured, the skin’s conductance in µS or microSiemens is determined by the GSR amplifier.

Skin conductance

There are two kinds of skin conductance: tonic and phasic.

Tonic is the skin conductance baseline level without any environmental stimuli and is also called
Skin Conductance Level (SCL). We all have differing SCL ranging from 10 to 50 µS. These levels
vary with time and depend upon our autonomic nervous system regulation and physiological state.

Phasic will change with events and are also called GSRs. Environmental stimuli such as smell,
sound, sight and more will cause time-related changes in our skin conductance. These are known as
Skin Conductance Responses (SCRs). These SCRs are increases in skin conductance that can last for
10 or 20 seconds and are followed by a return to the baseline level of SCL, which is also the tonic
level.

The parameters of event-related GSRs that can be measured and used are amplitude (in
microSiemens) and latency, rise-time and half-recovery times in seconds.

GSR and the cardiovascular system

Let’s look at how the circulation can be modeled by Ohm’s Law. Blood Pressure (BP), cardiac output
(CO), and total peripheral resistance (TPR) are analogous to voltage (V), current (I), and resistance
respectively. See Figure 3 below. The blood pressure curve of a normal young person shows the
relation between systolic BP, diastolic BP, pulse pressure and mean arterial pressure. 1A shows the
relationship between BP, CO, and TPR. 1B shows how systolic BP (SBP) and diastolic BP (DBP) are
the peak and minimum values of BP in each heart beat cycle. The Pulse Pressure (PP) is the
difference between SBP and DBP. The mean arterial pressure (MAP) is about equal to DBP plus 1/3
of the PP.

Figure 3: Blood Pressure (BP), cardiac output (CO), and total peripheral resistance (TPR) are
analogous to voltage (V), current (I), and resistance respectively. (Image courtesy of INDICON)
At INDICON, engineers showed an example of how acute hypertension can be predicted.2 Health and
fitness devices can be developed to monitor any and all of the parameters in Figure 4 and then the
designing company can add their other “special functionalities” depending upon their target
markets.

Figure 4: Health and fitness devices can be developed to monitor any and all of the parameters
shown in this diagram. (Image courtesy of Maxim Integrated)

Galvanic Skin Response and Maxim

MAXREFDES73#

Wearables developers can now immediately evaluate GSR sensing with the MAXREFDES73#
reference design from Maxim. Using a mobile device for Android, a user will be able to monitor their
skin resistance and temperature within 20m through the Bluetooth low-energy (BLE) wireless
interface.

I have this demo at home and I am very impressed with its usefulness and ease in setting up as well
as simplicity in operation. I see why this complete demo system will help designers of health and
fitness wearables not only understand GSR and the other important tenets of monitoring, but also
cut a designer’s precious development time down significantly to help meet time-to-market goals.
See Figure 5 for the complete system diagram and Figure 6 for a basic block diagram.
 Figure 5: The MAXREFDES73# reference design block diagram. The MAX32600 contains the
Analog Front End (AFE), ADCs and DACs. (Image courtesy of Maxim Integrated)

Figure 6: The front of the watch showing the electronics and battery. (Image courtesy of Maxim
Integrated)

Figure 7: The back of the watch showing skin contact electrodes. (Image courtesy of Maxim
Integrated)
 Figure 7A: GSR reference design from Maxim Integrated #MAXREFDES73# (Image courtesy of
Maxim Integrated)

This battery-powered platform takes high-precision AC impedance measurements while consuming

very little power. The MAX32600 microcontroller features an ARM Cortex-M3 32-bit RISC CPU that
operates at up to 24MHz, while integrating multiple high-performance analog peripherals.

Analog features include a 16-bit ADC with PGA, two 12-bit DACs, and a 16-channel multiplexer along
with classic digital features such as 256KB of flash memory, 32KB of SRAM, and a 2KB instruction
cache. This reference design provides a high-performance and flexible development platform, which
is a foundation for many fitness and medical measurement applications, especially galvanic skin
response measurement.

The reference design is a wrist-worn unit, powered by a LIR2032 rechargeable coin battery. A
mobile application program for devices for Android provides the interface, and has a free for
download on the Maxim Integrated website. The watch communicates with a device for Android
through a Bluetooth low-energy wireless interface.

Test results, hardware files, and firmware source code provide complete documentation for the
design. This complete wrist-worn unit is a must for designers and will help get to market quickly
with a robust design.

AC impedance measurement

I felt that the following detailed explanation of AC Impedance Measurement needed to be included
in this article for completeness. The material is courtesy of Maxim Integrated and is on their
website, as well.

The MAXREFDES73# is set up to perform an AC impedance measurement. See Figure 8. The 12-bit
DAC generates the excitation sinusoidal signal with a 1V peak-to-peak magnitude. The
microcontroller DMA engine makes the direct digital synthesis possible. The DAC0 output signal is
buffered by an op amp, and a second op amp is used to construct a second-order lowpass filter
(LPF1). A capacitor (not shown) blocks the DC component of the excitation signal. Four internal
SPST switches dynamically reconfigure the load to either the calibration path or human skin load.
An 8-bit DAC (not shown) generates the common-mode bias before the ADC input. An RC
combination constructs a first-order LPF and gain control in LPF2. Finally, an RC combination works
as a LPF before ADC input that acts as an anti-alias filter, as well.

Figure 8: Shown here is the block diagram for the MAXREFDES73# AC impedance
measurement. (Image courtesy of Maxim Integrated) Click to enlarge.

In this case the skin on the wrist is part of the input impedance of the inverting amplifier in the input
circuit of the demo. A coherent sinusoid stimulates the circuit and the response gets coherently
detected with a digital baseband quadrature sampling receiver to detect the amplitude and phase of
the network response. A known calibration path is on board that is also measured and using both of
these responses the system determines the complex impedance of the skin.

Next the complex impedance can be accurately determined from a low power observation using the
ratio of the responses to the test load to the calibration path.

In order to measure the impedance at a particular frequency (FC), a sinusoid voltage is applied to
the test load, so that x(t) = cos(2πx FC x t).

Then the output of the ADC is a scaled and phase shifted version of the input as y(t) = VL x cos(2π x t
+ θ)

In order to extract the phase of the received signal we need coherent detection. Now Digital
baseband quadrature sampling is implemented if the ADC can be synchronized with the DAC output
(AC excitation). Here, the sample rate is 4 times the excitation frequency as can be seen in Figure 9
below.
 Figure 9: MAXREFDES73# ADC quadrature sampling. (Image courtesy of Maxim Integrated)

Digital baseband quadrature sampling is typically illustrated in the frequency domain; however, for
the AC impedance measurements, the time domain is more applicable. The following equations
illustrate the processing from y(t) to real component I and complex component Q.

y(t) = VL × cos(2π Fc × t + θ)

TS = 1/(4 × Fc)

y(k) = VL× cos(π/2 × k + θ)

kΣ {0, 1, 2, ... N - 1}

y(k) = VL[cosθ, cos(π/2 + θ), cos(π + θ), cos(3π/2 + θ), ...]

y(k) = VL[cosθ, - sinθ, - cosθ, sinθ, ...]

To calculate the complex impedance, we are interested in extracting the magnitude and phase
information:

VLejθ = VLcos(θ) + jVLsin(θ) = I + JQ

By observation, the first 2 ADC samples yield I and Q:

I = VLcos(θ) = y(0)

Q = VLsin(θ) = y(1)

We can split the ADC samples (even/odd) and modulate by ±1 to generate multiple observations of
the real component I and the complex component Q. Because we are processing a single frequency,
we can average these outputs to increase the SNR (signal-to-noise ratio) of the measurements, as
illustrated below:

Where N is the number of ADC samples, it is a multiple of 4.

Phase = θ = atan2(Q,I)

Magnitude = VL = √(I2 + Q2)

The load complex impedance (Z(s)) is measured with the calibration load (Ycal(s)) and with the
sample under test load (Ysys(s)) at a frequency of interest. Based on the ratio of the responses and
the two external resistors, Ri and Rcal (see Figure 2), the load complex impedance can be observed
at the test frequency:

(Ri + Z(s))/Rcal = Ycal(s)/Ysys(s)

The load impedance magnitude and phase can be derived:

Z(s)magnitude = Rcal × (Ycal(s)magnitude/Ysys(s)magnitude) - Ri

Z(s)phase = Ycal(s)phase - Ysys(s)phase

For this reference design, we are more interested in the magnitude of the skin impedance, so only
the magnitude data are transmitted and displayed on the mobile application’s graphic user interface.
In the reference design firmware, the phase data are also computed for users to use in their specific
applications.
 Figure 10: The full capabilities of the Wellness Watch (Image courtesy of Maxim Integrated)
Click to enlarge

Wearable demonstrations and platforms

Wellness Watch Demonstration Platform

The Wellness Watch Demonstration Platform is a complete system with algorithms for:

● Continuous heart rate (optical)

● Pulse oximetry (optical)
● Temperature (electrical)
● Hydration level (electrical)
● Activity (MEMS)
● Connectivity (Bluetooth)

The platform includes the MAX66242 NFC Chip with integrated security:

The MAX66242 is a key part of sensor interface with a wireless connection via RFID technology. This
component is used for Medical Sensor Authentication and Calibration. The NFC Temperature Patch
and the Pulse Oximetry Patch feature this device. See Figures 11 and 12.
 Figure 10A: The Wellness Watch (Image courtesy of Maxim Integrated)

NFC Temperature Patch Demonstration Platform

Figure 11: The NFC Temperature Patch as a thermometer (Image courtesy of Maxim Integrated)

This device features:

● No contact
● Energy harvesting
● Secure authentication
● Single use; no contamination

Figure 12: System diagram for the NFC Temperature Patch design (Image courtesy of Maxim
Integrated)

Pulse Oximetry Patch Demonstration Platform

Figure 13: The Pulse Oximetry Patch (Image courtesy of Maxim Integrated)

This device features:

● Real-time monitoring
● Long battery life
● No contact: lower contamination risk

Fit 2 Shirt Demonstration Platform

This is a total EKG/fitness platform. See Figure 14.

 Figure 14: The Fit 2 Shirt (Image courtesy of Maxim Integrated)

This system features:

● Mobile, real-time analytics

● Can be used for people ranging from athletes to patients
● Improved measurement accuracy, battery life, and system size over the Fit Shirt 1

Figure 15: Full capabilities of the Fit 2 Shirt (Image courtesy of Maxim Integrated)
 Figure 16: Fit 2 Shirt technology features from Maxim Integrated (Image courtesy of Maxim
Integrated)

Figure 17: A basic block diagram of the Maxim Wellness Platform Reference Design system. The
Wellness Watch, Pulse Oximetry Patch and Fit 2 Shirt demonstration platforms are included under
this umbrella. The exclusive rights to these systems designs belong to Sarvint: Wellness Watch, Fit 2
Shirt, Temperature Patch, Pulse Oximetry Patch. (Image courtesy of Maxim Integrated)

References

1. The Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) and Investigation into ‘Cheating’ iWorx lab experiment by Dr.
 Paul Wagner and Dr. Tracy Wagner, Asst. Professors, Washburn University, Topeka, KS.
2. A wearable device for monitoring galvanic skin response to accurately predict changes in blood
pressure indexes and cardiovascular dynamics, K. Subramanya, Vishnuprasada V. Bhat, and
Sandeep Kamath, 2013 Annual IEEE India Conference (INDICON)

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Also see:

● 8 wearables beyond the Fitbit for health and fitness

● Teardown: A fitness tracker that drives chip demand
● Maxim “Fit” shirt
● CES Unveiled NY: What consumer electronics will 2016 bring?