ECG biometric in real-life settings: analysing different physiological conditions with wearable smart textiles shirts

Abstract

The adoption of biomedical signals such as the electrocardiogram (ECG) for biometric is rising in tandem with the increased attention to wearable devices. However, despite its potential benefits, ECG is rarely implemented as a biometric mechanism in real-life wearable applications. Therefore, this research aims to analyse the ECG signals extracted from wearable Hexoskin Proshirt for biometric authentication in different physiological conditions. A total of 11 subjects participated in this study, where the ECG signals were recorded while standing, sitting, walking, and uncontrolled activity. The raw ECG signal is first pre-processed using noise-removal butterworth filters in the time domain, followed by an efficient QRS segmented feature extraction approach. Finally, around 854 datasets were generated for training and validation, while the remaining 300 were used to test the proposed recognition method with a quadratic support vector machine (QSVM). The results show that the proposed method achieved a reliable accuracy above 98% with false acceptance rate (FAR) of 0.93%, false rejection rate (FRR) of 3.64%, and true positive rate (TPR) above 96% on the in-house datasets. This researchs findings confirm the possibility of using ECG biometrics for authentication purposes in various real-life settings with varying physiological parameters using a smart textile shirt.