Innovative wearable systems for heart monitoring

The aim of the PhD thesis here proposed is to research avant-garde heart activity monitoring systems in order to obtain a more complete status of the heart. The thesis results are constituted of two prototypes based on two different technologies. Moreover, the thesis describes how the cardiac physiological variables acquired are connected together over a long time period acquisition sequences and more specifically it discusses the integration of the sensor in textile substrates for producing a wearable system capable of monitoring the heart and respiratory activity during different physical situations. This research is focused on the development of a wearable system based on a single tranceiver. The tranceiver must have high sensitivity and must be able to acquire information about respiratory activity, heartbeat, heart apex pulse, cardiac sounds and the movement profile of the heart wall. Such system introduces innovative aspects in microelectronic technologies, in multi-signal acquisition and elaboration routines, in the sensor technique such as multi-modal tranceivers, in textile integration and in medical signals picture where provides many correlated vital signals and introduces mechanical information. That produces results before electrical cardiac monitoring. This work proposes the analysis and realization of two particular systems based on two different principles. The first is based on a particular bimodal ultrasonic transducer and the second is based on an Ultra-Wide-Band (UWB) radar.