Recovery and noise cancelling of the fetal heart signal using a combination of NLMS algorithm and S-G filter

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide appropriate methods for reducing the abnormalities on the extracted fetal heart signal from the maternal electrocardiogram (ECG). Design/methodology/approach In this regard, the extracted signal of the fetal heart from the mother, improved using an active noise cancelation (ANC) system. It uses commonly adaptive algorithms of normalized least mean squares (NLMS). In the present paper, fetal extraction and denoising methodology are proposed. This methodology uses a combination of the NLMS algorithm with Savitzky–Golay (S-G) filter. Findings The obtained results show that a combination of NLMS algorithm with filter coefficient of 15 and µ = 0.02 and S-G filter has a better qSNR (qSNR = 3.6727) and good performance for fetal ECG extraction in comparison with the other works for average fmSNR in the range of −30 to −15 dB. Also, with considering the SNR value of −24.7 dB before filtering and SNR = 3.1861 dB after filtering; the SNR improvement of 27.8861 dB has been obtained. Originality/value A new method in the extract and noise reduction of fetal ECG from maternal ECG by the combination of NLMS algorithm and S-G filter is proposed.