Heart rate monitor and method

摘要

A novel system and method for measuring and monitoring heart rate during exercise is disclosed. A near-real-time heart rate is obtained by extracting an electrocardiographic signal via electrically conductive handgrips, severely reducing the bandwidth of the signal using analog filtering, and then applying sophisticated digital correlation and logic techniques to extract the heart rate. The severe reduction of information content accomplished by the analog filter allows sophisticated digital treatment of the remaining signal by inexpensive digital processing means. In the present embodiment, a mass-produced general-purpose single-chip 8-bit microprocessor is adequate to accomplish all the required digitization and calculations.