Performance assessment of dry electrodes for wearable long term cardiac rhythm monitoring: Skin-electrode impedance spectroscopy

The use of wearable dry sensors for recording long term ECG signals is a requirement for certain studies of heart rhythm. Knowledge of the skin-electrode electrical performance of dry electrodes is necessary when seeking to improve various processing stages for signal quality enhancement. In this paper, methods for the assessment of dry skin-electrode impedance (ZSE) and its modelling are presented. Measurements were carried out on selected electrode materials such as silver, stainless steel, AgCl (dry) and polyurethane. These had ZSE values between 500 kΩ and 1 MΩ within the main ECG frequency range (1 Hz – 100 Hz); in contrast to plain iron material which had a significantly higher impedance. However, in spite of the high ZSE values, open bandwidth ECG traces were of acceptable quality and stability; with dry AgCl material offering the best ECG trace performance.