Design and Construction of an EMG Multichannel Acquisition System Prototype

Kurzfassung

This thesis presents the design and construction of an Electromyography (EMG) high−density acquisition system prototype at the Deutschen Zentrums für Luft und Raumfahrt (DLR) Bionics group in Munich− Germany. It does not intend to come up with new principles of EMG recording, but its scope is to search, compare, simulate, construct and validate nowadays available solutions that fulfill the imposed requirements. The design consists in ten functional blocks that cover all the system aspects from the power supply to the measuring electrodes. In order to construct the circuit prototype, some classical solutions were implemented and some novelty configurations were explored, for instance: a novelty DC rejection filter without grounded resistors, to prevent degradation of the front−end amplifier Common Mode rejection (CMR) and the driven shields that solved the problem of amplifying the EMG signal at a considerable distance from the source. This document covers all the way in between the muscles and the computer, that EMG signals go through: electrodes, esd protection, shield cables, DC rejection, amplification, Driven Right Leg feedback, filtering, isolation and digitization.