Design of a low-cost active dry electrode module for single channel EEG recording

Abstract

This paper presents a design of 1-channel active dry electrode module for EEG from one's forehead. The IA(instrumentation amplifier) circuit inside the module is based on the configuration sown on the paper MettingVanRijn et al. We analyze the IA circuit to find out the related equation, and then compare its simulated characteristic with the result obtained from the real active dry electrode circuit. With the active dry electrode and the wet(Ag/AgCl) electrode connected to the separated analog processing module on one's forehead at the same time, their real time and FFT outputs of EEG are examined for comparison. The active dry electrode module has advantages over the wet electrode and its analog processing module : 1) The size of the analog processing circuit of the active dry electrode module is smaller than that of existing EEG analog processing module ; 2) the total cost required to make the proposed analog processing circuit is much lower than that of the existing circuit, since the designed circuit needs smaller parts; 3) the electrical characteristic is comparable to the general EEG analog processing module even if the designed module has simpler circuit configuration.