Measurement of the athlete heart rate and real time detection of speed performance with a global position system (GPS)

Various physiological and kinematic changes occur instantly due to movement during the training or competition (race). In order to monitor these changes, protect the health of athletes, and base their performance follow-up on scientific data, various athlete tracking systems are developed. Physiologically, the heart rate is the most important parameter to estimate the working intensity (internal loading) of the athlete. Various wearables are developed in the pursuit of performance and external load data. In the study, a chest belt and GPS / GNSS system were used to obtain both physiological and kinematic data. Unlike other studies, GPS / GNSS data with centimeter accuracy were obtained using RTK, i.e., the "Real-Time Kinematics" method. This method is based on the principle that one GPS / GNSS receiver is configured to receive correction data, while the other receiver is configured to receive both correction data and information from satellites. With the system created in this study, the accuracy level has reached up to 2.5 centimeters. One of the innovations of this study is the use of a new communication protocol, ESP-NOW. The heart rate information and precise GPS/ GNSS data collected with the ESP32 on the athlete were transferred to the trainer outside the field/playground with the ESP-NOW wireless communication protocol.