Psychological stress recognition from heart rate variability parameters based on field programmable gate arrays

Psychological stress is a big threat to people’s health. Early detection of psychological stress is important. The design of a stress recognition device based on the ECG (electrocardiograph) signal is presented in this paper. The device features intelligence, precision, portability, fast response, and low power consumption. In the design, the ECG signals are acquired by the AD8232 ECG module and processed by a low power consumption FPGA (Field Programmable Gated Array) development board PYNQ-Z2. Meanwhile, a modified Deep Forest model named Aw-Deep Forest (Adaptive Weight Deep Forest) is proposed. The Aw-Deep Forest has better performance than the Deep Forest model because it improves the fitting quality of the forests. By implementing the Aw-Deep Forest model on the FPGA, the device can assess people’s state of psychological stress by analyzing the HRV (heart rate variability) parameters from ECG data. This paper mainly introduces the detailed process of ECG signal collecting, filtering, analog signal to digital signal conversion, HRV parameter analysis, and psychological stress recognition with Aw-Deep Forest. The final accuracy is 81.39%.