Combining ensemble empirical mode decomposition with spectrum subtraction technique for heart rate monitoring using wrist-type photoplethysmography.

•Heart rate (HR) monitoring using wrist-type PPG signals during physical exercise was examined.•The proposed method combines ensemble empirical mode decomposition with spectrum subtraction technique.•The proposed method provides satisfactory performance on twelve PPG datasets collected when the subjects were running with the peak speed of 15km/h.•The average absolute error of HR estimation was 1.83 beat per minute and the Pearson correlation was 0.989 between the ground-truth and estimated HR.