Design and Evaluation of a Compact CNN for EMG-Based Wearable Systems Under Embedded Constraints

Electromyographic (EMG) signals are increasingly used in wearable cyber-physical systems (CPS), where reliable movement recognition must be achieved under limited computational resources. In this study, we present a compact EMG processing framework that integrates signal acquisition, preprocessing, segmentation, and movement classification within a unified pipeline designed for embedded-oriented applications. The proposed approach combines a multi-channel EMG acquisition system with a lightweight one-dimensional convolutional neural network (1D CNN) developed according to TinyML principles, withprocessing input windows of size 32 × 3 and low computational complexity and memory requirements. Experimental evaluation was conducted on a dataset collected from 15 participants performing squat, walking, and running activities under realistic acquisition conditions. The proposed model achieved an accuracy of 0.9135, an F1-score of 0.9124, and a ROC AUC of approximately 0.96, demonstrating reliable classification performance. Following 8-bit quantization, the model size was reduced to approximately 2 KB, supporting deployment on resource-constrained embedded platforms. The results show that compact CNN architectures can effectively classify EMG-based movement patterns while maintaining a small computational footprint, providing a practical foundation for future wearable CPS and TinyML-enabled applications.