Experimental respiratory signal analysis based on Empirical Mode Decomposition

Respiration is a widely used biosignal which is combined with other biosignals in order to extract information about the physiological or pathological conditions that may occur in the development of a treatment. Acquisition of respiration in a clinical environment is usually accomplished by standard hospital equipment and minimum invasive techniques. In this paper a non invasive technique is used for respiration monitoring based on accelerometers. The acquired signal is sampled and transmitted through a wireless sensor network to the gateway point (sink) where it is processed. Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) is considered as a method of processing of biosignals such as respiration and the application of the decomposition method in experimental signals acquired by means of a wireless sensor network is evaluated. The processing technique covered in this paper is based on selecting the appropriate signals (IMF) in which respiration is decomposed, by their spectral characteristics that correspond to respiration.