ElectroCardioGra

Variable Gain
Amplifier

Brian Chen & Mike Freyberger

Department of Electrical Engineering, Princeton
University

Introduction
The electrical
What is an ECG
activity of the heart
produces a low
Signal?
amplitude signal
every heartbeat.
This signal is
captured by
measuring the
voltage differential
between electrodes
placed on each wrist.
The ECG is used to
Visualization of the electric activity of
amplify and filter the
the heart
signal from the body,
in order to produce a
clean signal of the
human heartbeat.

Physical
Implementati
on
Microcontrolle
r

INPU
T
OUTP
UT
Instrumentation

Notch Filter
Band Pass
Filter

Instrumentation
Amplifier

ECG Design

Schematic of complete
circuit

ECG Electrodes: Measures electric activity of the heart.

Isolation Circuit: This contains circuitry to optically isolate the
signal in order to ensure human safety.

Components of the ECG

system

Instrumentation Amplifier: INA122 Operation Amplifier

precision instrumentation amplifier for accurate, low noise
differential signal acquisition.

Band-Pass Filter: A passive filter design consisting of

cascaded high and low pass filters to remove frequencies below
50mHz and above 1kHz.

Variable Gain Amplifier: Two cascaded inverting amplifiers

used to produce a variable gain from 1 to 20.

Notch Filter: An active op amp Twin-T notch filter with variable

Q that eliminates main line electric hum of 60Hz.

Results

LTSpice simulation of complete circuit using a

cardiac signal

Display
Circuit

Physical output of complete circuit using a

cardiac signal

Amplifier
Notch
Filter

Voltage
Follower

BPM Output
Variable
Gain
Amplifier

Band
Pass
Filter

LTSpice simulation of complete circuit

frequency response
LED Heartbeat

Physical output of complete circuit frequency

response

The ECG effectively amplifies and filters the input signal in order to produce a
clean cardiac waveform.
The frequency response demonstrates the desired results of the cascaded filters.
DC offset, 60Hz noise, and most high frequency noise are successfully
eliminated, but some high frequency noise persists in our output. In order to
decrease the noise, we would decrease the upper cutoff frequency of the band
pass filter and add another low pass filter at the end of the circuit.

Complete ECG with display circuit

Depending on the strength of the input signal, both the reference voltage and
resistance of the variable gain amplifier need to be adjusted accordingly. In
order eliminate the possibility of human error, a microcontroller can be used to
set the right amount of amplification before ECG readings are taken.

Schematic of display
circuit

The output of the ECG is sampled at a high

frequency by the Arduino microcontroller,
which then calculates and presents the BPM
on the 4-digit 7-segment display.
The amplitude of the output voltage drives
the LED heartbeat, which lights up according
to the different parts of the cardiac
waveform.