An efficient compression technique for Foetal phonocardiogram signals in remote healthcare monitoring systems

Abstract

Remote Healthcare Monitoring Systems (RHMs) that employ fetal phonocardiography (fPCG) signals are highly efficient technologies for monitoring continuous and long-term fetal heart rate. Wearable devices used in RHMs still face a challenge that decreases their efficacy in terms of energy consumption because these devices have limited storage and are powered by batteries. This paper proposes an effective fPCG compression algorithm to reduce RHM energy consumption. In the proposed algorithm, the Discrete Orthogonal Charlier Moment (DOCMs) is used to extract features of the signal. The householder orthonormalization method (HOM) is used with the Charlier Moment to overcome the propagation of numerical errors that occur when computing high-order Charlier polynomials. The proposed algorithm’s performance is evaluated in terms of CR, PRD, SNR, PSNR, and QS and provides the average values 18.33, 0.21, 48.85, 68.86, and 90.88, respectively. The results of the comparison demonstrate the proposed compression algorithm’s superiority over other algorithms. It also tested in terms of compression speed and computational efficiency. The results indicate that the proposed algorithm has a high Compression speed (218.672 bps) and high computational efficiency (21.33). Additionally, the results reveal that the proposed algorithm decreases the energy consumption of a wearable device due to the transmission time decreasing for data by 3.68 s.