A Comparative Study of Wavelet Denoising for Multifunction Myoelectric Control

The aim of this study was to investigate the application of wavelet denoising in noise reduction for multifunction myoelectric control system. Six upper limb motions including hand open, hand close, wrist extension, wrist flexion, pronation, and supination. For each motion, two channels of electrodes were applied. A comparative study of four classical denoising algorithms including universal thresholding, SURE thresholding, hybrid thresholding, and minimax thresholding have been used to remove white Gaussian noise at various signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) from EMG signals. Applications of soft and hard thresholding as well as threshold rescaling methods were considered and the whole procedures of noise reduction were applied with different wavelet functions and different decomposition levels. Evaluations of the performance of noise reduction are determined using mean squared error (MSE). The results show that Daubechies wavelet with second orders (db2) provides marginally better performance than other possibilities. Suitable number of decomposition levels is four. Universal and soft thresholding is the best of wavelet denoising algorithms from eight possible denoising processes under investigation. In addition, the threshold using a level-dependent estimation of level noise showed better than others.