Design of Monophasic Spike-Exponential Waveform for Functional Electrical Stimulator Based on Pulse Width Modulation

Abstract

The Functional Electrical Stimulator design using monophasic spike-exponential waveform was proposed and described in this study. The monophasic square waveform has benefit in generating an action potential, but it could cause side effects such as toxic caused by the electrode polarization. The square waveform signal which the frequency and pulse width could be modulated was manipulated to be the monophasic spike-exponential waveform. Transformer OT240 was applied at the end of the FES system part and functioned as a voltage amplifier and DC signal isolator. On every frequency range between 5–100 Hz, the 16 peak voltage stages with the lower limit of 45 Volt and an upper limit of 400 Volt was arranged to obtain VRMS value in each stage. Characterization result shows that the produced waveform was monophasic spike-exponential with the narrow pulse width (t1/2 = 7 µs) and VRMS in the maximum frequency and peak voltage was 8.99 Volt. This study showed that the designed FES had high VP and low VRMS, thus, it could be concluded that this FES system design could be a candidate for its application.

Keywords

• functional electrical stimulation
• medical rehabilitation
• monophasic spike-exponential waveform
• pulse width modulation.