The aim of this study is to prove the capability of vinyl cutting technique to cut the conductive traces of electronic circuit layout which used a copper tape (Copper tape 1181 from 3M) on flexible substrate to replace the method of using nano-scale particle material. A wireless electrocardiography (ECG) circuit was integrated and fabricated on flexible substrate, namely a polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate by using vinyl cutting method to produce the conductive line traces. After that, the fabricated circuit is used for acquiring ECG signals from a patient simulator and human subjects to measure the performance differences and compatibility as a wearable device. In the data processing stage, ECG data were denoised using sym20 from Wavelet Transform tool provided by MATLAB. Then, Signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) was calculated and used as the signal quality indicator. At the end of the study, flexible circuit performance was compared to MIT-BIH Arrhythmia database and it shows that there is no significance difference between both. In conclusion, vinyl cutting method shows a promising fabrication output on PET substrate as the performance of both flexible ECG circuit is comparable with rigid ECG circuit by a previous study.

The value of smart medical devices, including heart rate monitors, is forecasted by U.S. Smart Medical Devices to be increased yearly until year 2025. Smartphones play an important role in the healthcare industry, thus, the increase in smartphone usage is in parallel with the rising demand for wireless and smartphone-compatible medical devices. This in turn promotes awareness and focus on health and fitness, and demand-led growth for home usage. There were a few researches related to the methods used in the fabrication of flexible circuits such as screen printing, inkjet printing and direct transfer methods. On top of that, different flexible substrate materials such as paper, plastic (such as Polyethylene terephthalate (PET)), Kapton and textile-fabric were used by researchers to achieve their study objectives. Each method and material used in the previous studies were reviewed to address critical points such as to emphasize the adhesion property of materials as it may affect the quality and reliability of the flexible circuit during and after fabrication process. Thus, the focus of this study is to review a wireless ECG monitoring device which is compact, flexible, and equipped with wireless communication technology.

The increasing demand of smart garment for monitoring people’s health is due to comfortability, lightweight and flexibility properties of the textile could offer to the user. The textile-based electrocardiography (ECG) electrode is an alternative of commercially available silver/silver chloride (Ag/AgCl) electrode which could cause skin allergies to certain users and is not suitable for long-term monitoring electrode. In this paper, we report the performance of reduced graphene oxide (rGO) coated cotton fabric electrode to the effect of longevity and temperature. The ECG waveform and signal-to noise ratio (SNR) of the rGO-coated cotton electrodes were compared to that the performance of Ag/AgCl electrodes. The reliability characterization confirmed the rGO-coated cotton fabric conductance maintain at more than 80% even after 100 days of fabrication and the conductance measurement is increasing with respect to the temperature applied. The electrode shows lower in impedance value and the performance in acquiring ECG signal is comparable with the Ag/AgCl electrode. The vertical position rectangle-shaped electrode is recommended in measuring ECG signals. In conclusion, the rGO-coated cotton electrode with flexible dry-type electrode and excellent performance especially reliability and in capturing ECG signal had shown a promising result for further development.

Flexible printed circuit is rapidly developing in the electronics industry. However, the circuit substrate of flexible materials limited due to its temperature limitation characteristics. In this study, two flexible materials were tested: a silicon rubber and a thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU). The effectiveness of the fabrication process on both materials was compared using a vinyl cutter. Results showed that the TPU material is better for the fabrication process due to the roughness of its surface which is higher than silicon rubber that makes the adhesion of the copper tape stronger on the surface.

The development of information and communication technology has improved health tele-care by providing more sophisticated analysis software to support a realtime processing of ECG signals. Moreover, intense research has been devoted to the development of an affordable and reliable ECG for daily monitoring and outpatient usage. Meanwhile, the increase in manufacturing of small system module in medical diagnostic equipment for digital signal processing (DSP) applications can provide affordable ECGs with real-time processing which is suitable for monitoring and alert system. In this study, a wireless communication channel of ECG is developed using an ESP8266 WiFi module and an BMD101 Neurosky bio-signal system-on-a-chip (SoC) device. The SoC is designed with a powerful DSP structure which has a filter, amplifier, 16-bit analog-digital converter and an integrated 22.1MHz clock reference signal. The ECG circuit is equipped with single lead of two inputs of positive and negative. The size of the ECG circuit is as compact as 4.5 cm × 3 cm of length x width and it is a portable device. The performance shows the ECG device was able to capture the normal sinus rhythm of 60 beat-per-minute (bpm), 80 bpm, 100 bpm and 120 bpm from a patient simulator. The ECG circuit design also able to capture abnormal sinus rhythm such as atrial fibrillation, ventricular tachycardia, ventricular fibrillation.

The purpose of this study is to design a wearable electrocardiograph (ECG) device which is to monitor the electrical activity of the heart in real time. The development of a wearable ECG device is by using Neurosky Cardio module (BMD101) and Photon Wi-Fi development kit from Particle. Photon Wi-Fi is a Wi-Fi which is integrated with a microcontroller. Both components are chosen and the circuit connection is done using Eagle software. After the fabrication process, the components are assembled onto the fabricated board, the printed circuit board (PCB), to be further testing of functionality. Finally, the acquired ECG data is processed by using BMD101, then the data is analysed using Arduino platform. After that, the signals detection is sent wirelessly to the cloud or web server using Photon Wi-Fi. This design can be used widely at home, or healthcare due to its compact size.

The high voltage DC power supply widely used for space communication and for industry consist of multistage rectifier circuit. To produce 6KV output voltage, Cockroft-Walton multiplier circuits are applied by reducing number of stages from 1200 into 32 stages without using transformer. With the implementation of this technique, it can minimize the volume of the circuit to be integrated on a single chip and it also can reduce associated power loss in the circuit. By eliminating the transformer method, cost and size for making Cockroft-Walton Voltage Multiplier are reduced. Specification need to be considered for designing a multiplier is size of component must use within the range of expected load current and output voltage The details description of the simulation, design, development and implementation of this works are done using Cadence PSPICE software. Results are present in term of the performances and efficiency.

Background: This paper describes the design of 5 V to 6 kV DC-DC converter by using a switching regulator with Cockroft-Walton (C-W) voltage multiplier for a high voltage power supply module. Methods: The proposed design consists of Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) controller circuit, voltage multiplier, and feedback signal. A single unit of 5 V input triggers LT1618 controller circuit to generate 20 V which then produces 300 V from LT8331 output that is connected to diode-capacitor multiplier circuit to achieve final 6 kV. A negative feedback signal is required to stabilize an output voltage. With the implementation of C-W voltage multiplier technique, the output is boosted up as required from the input signal voltage 5 V DC. Results: The LTspice simulation results indicate that the proposed DC converter can generate 6.20 kV. Line regulation of 17 % and the load regulation of 14 % are obtained based on the proposed design. Conclusion: The proposed design is suitable for high voltage power supply module.