Applications of DSP

Biomedical Signal Processing

Example : Hearing Aid

EXAMPLE : FIR filters in a hearing aid.

This example requires selective

amplification of the sound in the
frequencies in which the patient has
the greatest hearing loss. The
desired frequency response is
obtained from measurements of the
patient's hearing loss, and the filter
gain chosen to compensate for this.
FIR filters are well suited to this task.

The desired frequencyresponse of the filter is

determined at a
number of frequencies
(*). In this example,
the strongest
amplification is
required around 1500
Hz. With a practical FIR
filter, the desired
response is
approximated (solid
line). Here the
sampling rate was
fs=22050 Hz, and the
filter-length N=201.

EXAMPLE: The acquisition of a blood pressure signal.

A blood pressure (BP) signal contains clinically relevant
components up to about 20 Hz. In the current example it is
also known that the signal is contaminated by noise at the
mains frequency (50Hz) and other noise (mainly below 50 Hz)
may also be present. What is the minimum sampling rate
required?
The sampling rate has to be above 100Hz, as the highest
frequency present is 50 Hz. It is the maximum frequency
present in the signal, not the maximum frequency of interest,
which determines the minimum sampling rate required. If a
sampling rate below 100 Hz is employed, the mains (and
other) noise may be aliased into the clinically relevant
frequency band of BP signal and could contaminate the BP
signal (see figure below). If the noise (mains interference) is
removed prior to sampling, by a low-pass (anti-alias) filter with
a cut-off frequency at say 20 Hz, the sampling rate could be
reduced to a value above 40 Hz, without significant aliasing
occurring. This was carried out below, and a sampling rate of
67 Hz was chosen.

 Digital Signal Processing Systems

After digitization it is desirable to calculate signal
parameters that reflect the signal characteristics.
The most commonly used are the mean value, the power,
the peak-to-peak amplitude, and the signal-to-noise ratio.
The mean value of a signal is defined as

This represents the value around which the signal

fluctuates, and is also known as the signal's 'DC value'. The
fluctuating part (i.e. the residual when the mean is
subtracted) is known as the 'AC component' of the signal.
The peak-to-peak amplitude of the signal is given by the
range from the minimum to the maximum value. This is
also sometimes known as the dynamic range of the signal.

 EXAMPLE : Arterial blood pressure

The arterial blood pressure signal shows the
fluctuations of the pressure in an artery during
the cardiac cycle. This increases when the
heart contracts, and decreases as the blood
drains away while the heart relaxes.
The mean blood pressure gives the average
value during the recorded period.
The fluctuations around the mean constitute
the AC component of the signal. In many
applications (though not for the case of blood
pressure), only the AC component is of clinical
interest.

 The power of a signal is defined by

which represents its mean-square
value.
The square root of PAV is the rootmean-square (rms) value of the
signal, and gives a measure of the
mean amplitude, which takes both
the DC and the AC component into
account.

 Many signals, including most from biomedical origin,

are contaminated by noise. The signal-to-noise ratio
gives the ratio of signal power, to that of the noise:
where P is the power of the signal, and P n the power
of the noise-component. In dB,

Of course, the definition of signal and noise is

application dependent: what is signal for one
problem, may be noise for another. For example, an
ECG (heart-signal) may be contaminated by EMG
(muscle) noise; for other studies, it is the EMG which
is of interest, and the ECG is considered as noise (or
artefact).

EXAMPLE :
An electrocardiogram (ECG) signal, with
increasing levels of noise.

 An ECG signal contaminated by noise

of progressively increasing power,
with signal to noise ratios decreasing
form SNR= (no noise top row) to
SNR=10, 2 and 1 (bottom row). In
the last line, the signal is almost
completely obscured by the noise.

EXAMPLE : Time and frequency-domain representations of a

signal, and an IIR digital filter.

The ECG signal may be contaminated by movement

artefact and by the electrical activity of other
muscles near the heart, as already mentioned above.
High-pass filters, which suppress low-frequency
activity, and low-pass filters, which suppress highfrequency activity may be used to selectively
enhance the frequencies in which the ECG
predominates, and attenuate those frequency bands,
in which the noise is strongest.
The resulting signals are then more suitable of
posterior analysis, for example to determine the
heart rate, which can be very difficult in very noisy
raw data, as illustrated below.

 In Figure, The original signal is filtered

using a 'Butterworth' high-pass filter(IIR
filter) (0.7 Hz)
with coefficients a=[1 -3.9954 5.9862
-3.9862 0.9954] and
b = [0.9977 -3.9908 5.9862 -3.9908
0.9977]
(the filter coefficients of are here
expressed as vectors).
Clearly M=N=4. The high-pass filter
removes low frequencies (below 0.7 Hz,
in this case), and thus the relatively slow
base-line drift introduced by the

Low pass filtered image

 Figure 16. The ECG signal has most of its power in

the frequency band up to about 15 Hz, whereas
the EMG has much of its power beyond that range.
By applying a low-pass filter, with a cut-off
frequency at 15 Hz, the EMG can be attenuated,
and the ECG is thus enhanced.
This was applied here, using an IIR filter with the
following coefficients: a = [1 -3.9015 5.7093
-3.7140 0.9062] and b = [0.1202 0.4809 0.7214
0.4809 0.1202]\10-6 .
If this signal is compared to the raw data, it may
be noted that the heart-beats are now vastly
clearer, and almost all (except that at around 8 s)
can be identified.

 EXAMPLE :
IIR filters to extract alpha activity from EEG signal
The EEG signal is the electrical signal recorded from the
surface of the scalp, and reflects the electrical activity of
the brain.
It is most commonly used in the diagnosis and
investigation of epilepsy.
In normal adult subjects, the most noticeable feature is
the alpha-rhythm: this is an oscillation of the signal in the
range from about 8 13 Hz, which is observed most
strongly at the back of the head, when the subject is at
rest, with eyes closed (but not asleep).
In the example below, an IIR filter is used to enhance the
alpha activity in an EEG signal that contains mains
interference (50 Hz), artifact and noise (including some
EEG components from outside the range of interest).

 EXAMPLE : An EEG signal and its DFT .

Figures below show an example of the DFT of a
segment of an EEG signal (taken form the
electrodes O2/A2, and showing strong alpha
activity).
The definition of the DFT leads to a spectrum
that shows symmetry around the mid-point
(N/2), when the signal x(n) only has real
components (i.e. the imaginary part of is zero).
The frequency index k may also be converted
into true frequency (e.g. in Hz), by considering
the sampling rate and the length of the signal
analyzed. )

Application of DSP in Speech

Processing
Speaker Identification/Recognition
(e.g. Security)
Synthetic Speech
(e.g. Text to speech, at railway
station )

Schematic diagram of the human

speech production :

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