Heart-Rate Monitoring Device based on Fluxgate Sensors

In this paper, a simple and portable heart-rate monitoring device is designed and developed with an associated fluxgate sensor, using the non-invasive technique for continuous monitoring of heart rate. A highly sensitive fluxgate sensor (FGS) is developed in the vacquier-type with a sensitivity of 195 V/Oe and a low-noise of 100 pT/Hz@1Hz. As FGS is arranged on the wrist of the volunteers. The design is totally safe and non-invasive. There is no injection part to the volunteers. Heart-rate is estimated via an algorithm that counts the number of the heartbeat in a period timer, then the beats per minute are determined. The heart-rate system is driven by a simple combined digital and analog circuits for extracting the heart-rate information. The experiments are carried out on several volunteers. The experimental results show that the accuracy of the heart-rate estimation is about 1 beat per minute (bpm). The proposed design is, therefore, a promising technique for continuous monitoring of heart rate. Especially, the heart rate can be used as a piece of critically important information for remote health monitoring systems such as mental state, sleep situations, and heart diseases.