A proportional fusion adaptation algorithm to reduce noise in sEMG signals of the lower limb

Abstract To address issues related to unknown noise pollution and the inadequate performance of single adaptive noise reduction algorithms in measuring lower limb surface electromyography (sEMG) signals, this paper proposes an algorithm that combines the fast convergence speed and strong noise reduction capability of recursive least-squares (RLS) with the low computational complexity of the normalized least-mean-square (NLMS) and improved proportionate NLMS (IPNLMS). Through the proportional fusion of RLS with NLMS and RLS with IPNLMS, the proposed algorithm greatly improves convergence speed, stability, and noise reduction performance while effectively reducing computational complexity. Moreover, considering the influence of the initial value of weights on the noise reduction performance during the updating process of the adaptive noise reduction algorithm, a weight initial value setting (WIS) module is proposed to optimize the initial value of the weights by the known amount of data. Based on 50 independent experiments, an adaptive noise reduction algorithm and WIS module were used to reduce the unknown noise in the lower limb sEMG signals, which was generated by white Gaussian noise, power line interference, or hybrid noise interfered by an unknown environment. The noise reduction performance was evaluated by using the average value of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), the root-mean-square error, and R -square. Compared with the RLS, NLMS, and IPNLMS algorithms for noise reduction of vastus lateralis, rectus femoris, and biceps femoris signals containing unknown noise, the SNR of RLS-NLMS, RLS-IPNLMS, WIS-RLS-NLMS, and WIS-RLS-IPNLMS is improved by an average of [7.92%, 55.54%, 55.63%], [7.45%, 54.90%, 54.99%], [19.70%, 72.38%, 72.71%], [19.32%, 71.84%, 72.19%]. The simulation results verify that the proportional fusion adaptive noise reduction algorithm and the WIS module effectively accelerate the convergence speed, enhance the noise reduction capability, and reduce the computational complexity.