A method for extracting human gait series from accelerometer signals based on the ensemble empirical mode decomposition

In this paper, the ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) is applied to analyse accelerometer signals collected during normal human walking. First, the self-adaptive feature of EEMD is utilised to decompose the accelerometer signals, thus sifting out several intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) at disparate scales. Then, gait series can be extracted through peak detection from the eigen IMF that best represents gait rhythmicity. Compared with the method based on the empirical mode decomposition (EMD), the EEMD-based method has the following advantages: it remarkably improves the detection rate of peak values hidden in the original accelerometer signal, even when the signal is severely contaminated by the intermittent noises; this method effectively prevents the phenomenon of mode mixing found in the process of EMD. And a reasonable selection of parameters for the stop-filtering criteria can improve the calculation speed of the EEMD-based method. Meanwhile, the endpoint effect can be suppressed by using the auto regressive and moving average model to extend a short-time series in dual directions. The results suggest that EEMD is a powerful tool for extraction of gait rhythmicity and it also provides valuable clues for extracting eigen rhythm of other physiological signals.