Taking care of animals has been the greatest task for humankind since the stone age. Mechanisms and devices are designed to relieve the caretakers from their burden. Not until recent years, electronics are applied in massive agriculture industry to monitor the animals for a stable commercial outcome. With the development of microelectromechanical systems and microprocessors, putting electronics on our animals enable us to understand them more.

This thesis focusses on building a biosignal monitoring system and its signal processing aspects of the photoplethysmogram. The signal can easily be corrupted by the noise source during the data collection by the motion caused by natural animal movements. Thus, the reduction in such artifact is very important in indicating an accurate heart beati...[ Read more ]

Taking care of animals has been the greatest task for humankind since the stone age. Mechanisms and devices are designed to relieve the caretakers from their burden. Not until recent years, electronics are applied in massive agriculture industry to monitor the animals for a stable commercial outcome. With the development of microelectromechanical systems and microprocessors, putting electronics on our animals enable us to understand them more.

This thesis focusses on building a biosignal monitoring system and its signal processing aspects of the photoplethysmogram. The signal can easily be corrupted by the noise source during the data collection by the motion caused by natural animal movements. Thus, the reduction in such artifact is very important in indicating an accurate heart beating pattern. From a technical aspect, this thesis compares and analyzes different algorithms developed to reduce the artifacts caused by animal’s movement.

In terms of commercial usage, this thesis focuses on the market potential in having a biosignal monitoring electronics system for animals - pets as the main market, ideally horses for the project to being with. The data collection and prototypes designed are compared with existing market players in different metrics.

Key words: Animal Surveillance, Signal Processing, Wireless Communication