Although our EMG was able to reproduce the muscle activation signal at the output of the collection circuit, certain deficiencies in the signal quality were apparent. We believe these deficiencies to be largely the result of two factors. The first of these factors is simply the introduction of noise which is inherent when broadcasting the signal over a medium such as the FM band. Although our 60 Hz filter removed some of the noise that was introduced, many other forms of noise were present which led to the degradation of our signal.

The second major cause of these deficiencies was the demonstrated lack of the Voltage-to-Frequency converter to respond quickly to frequencies of the input voltage which were larger then 16-20 Hz. Since most frequencies of the EMG signal are above 20 Hz, it seems likely that this would have a significant effect on our output. We attempted to alleviate this problem by changing the various time constants in the VFC circuit, but were largely unsuccessful in improving the signal quality. If further work were done on the project, this band-limiting of the VFC would be a primary area of investigation.

Because of the difficulties caused by the VFC and FM transmission in general, the processing features of the EMG also remain somewhat underdeveloped. Although they do filter, rectify, and integrate the signal as desired, reference voltage disparities between the Frequency-to-Voltage Converter and these amplifiers make these operations (with the exception of filtering) somewhat meaningless. This is a problem with could likely be resolved quickly, but it this point there has been no opportunity to do so.

These two problems would be the initial focus of any additional work performed on the electromyograph. At some point, it may also be interesting to investigate the effect that signal transmission methods other the FM would have on the quality of the captured signal.