5.4 Multi-Frequency Records

When signals of different types are recorded simultaneously and for lengthy periods, it may be appropriate to choose different sampling frequencies in order to reduce the storage requirements for signals of limited bandwidth. The support for multi-frequency records provided in WFDB library version 9.0 (and later versions) allows application programs to read and write records containing signals digitized at multiple sampling frequencies. In a multi-frequency record, a frame of samples contains one or more samples from each signal. The frame rate (base sampling frequency) of the record, as recorded in the header file and as normally returned by sampfreq, is defined as the number of frames per second. Signals sampled at multiples of the frame rate are referred to as oversampled signals. For each signal, a frequency multiplier specifies how many samples are included in each frame. The frequency multiplier (1 by default) is an integer, encoded within the format field in the header file, and specified in the spf field of the WFDB_Siginfo structure for the signal.

A frame can be read as it was written (see section getframe) by an application that has been written to make use of multi-frequency records. Applications that are not “multi-frequency aware” can still read signals using the standard getvec interface, which returns (as always) one sample per signal on each invocation. By default, getvec reads multi-frequency records in low-resolution mode. In this mode, each oversampled signal is resampled at the frame rate by averaging all of its samples in each frame.

The function setgvmode can be used to select high-resolution mode, in which getvec replicates samples of signals digitized at less than the maximum sampling frequency (i.e., using zero-order interpolation) so that each sample of an oversampled signal appears in at least one sample vector returned by getvec. In this mode, sampfreq returns the number of samples per signal returned by getvec per second of the record. Furthermore (when using WFDB library version 9.6 and later versions), all time quantities passed to and from the WFDB library functions are understood to be in units of these shorter sampling intervals; thus, for example, getann converts times in frame numbers (as recorded in annotation files) into times in sample numbers before filling in the caller’s annotation structure, and putann converts times in sample numbers into times in frame numbers before writing annotations into annotation files. This permits applications that are not “multi-frequency aware” to read multi-frequency records with the highest possible resolution.

The operating mode used by getvec, if not specified by an explicit call to setgvmode, is determined by the value of the environment variable WFDBGVMODE if it is set, and otherwise by the value of DEFWFDBGVMODE in ‘wfdblib.h’ at the time the library was compiled.. In either case, a value of 0 selects low-resolution mode, and any other value selects high-resolution mode.