High-quality biopotential acquisition without a reference electrode: power-line interference reduction by adaptive impedance balancing in a mixed analog-digital design

Power-line-interference (PLI) is one of the major disturbing factors in almost all ground-free biopotential acquisition applications. The body is a volume conductor and collects PLI currents. Some of these currents pass through the sensing electrodes, then the electrode cables, and finally via the amplifier input impedances they reach the signal ground. The electrode impedances and the amplifier input impedances form an impedance bridge. Due to electrode impedance instability over time, the bridge tends to be imbalanced and produces differential PLI which is amplified together with the useful signal. This paper describes a powerful mixed analog-digital solution for automatic impedance bridge balance using software PLL for line synchronization. The approach is implemented and validated through recorded real ECG signals. The PLI is canceled by adding part of the common-mode voltage, with automatically adjusted amplitude and phase, to the useful differential biosignal. The described approach produces high-quality biosignals without the need for a common-mode reference electrode. It is applicable to all biosignals taken with surface electrodes like ECG, EEG, EMG, EOG, etc., and can benefit all diagnostic and therapeutic medical devices where these signals are in use.

Automated summary

This paper presents a powerful solution for eliminating power-line interference using a mixed analog-digital approach. The approach automatically balances the impedance bridge and cancels interference by adding common-mode voltage to the differential biosignal.