• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.69-80
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• 1998

This research was designed to investigate how the exercise program affects paraplegic standing and walking employing functional electrical stimulation(FES). Emphasis was also given to fatigue of major lower extremity muscles induced by different types of electrical stimulation. We applied continuous and intermittent rectangular pulse trains to quadriceps of 10 normal subjects and 4 complete paraplegic patients. The frequencies were 20Hz and 80Hz, and the knee angle was fixed at 90$^{\circ}$and 150$^{\circ}$to investigate how muscle fatigue is related to muscle length. The knee extensor torque was measured and monitored. We have been training quadriceps and gastrocnemius of a male paraplegic patient by means of electrical stimulation for the past two year. FES standing was initiated when the knee extensors became strong enough to support the body weight, and then the patient started FES walking utilizing parallel bars and a walker. We used an 8-channel constant-voltage stimulator and surface electrodes. The experimental results indicated that paralyzed muscles fatigued rapidly around the optimal length contrary to normal muscles and confirmed that low frequency and intermittent stimulation delayed fatigue. Our exercise program increased muscle force by approximately 10 folds and decreased the fatigue index to half of the initial value. In addition, the exercise enabled the patient to voluntarily lift each leg up to 10cm, which was of great help to the swing phase of FES walking. Both muscle force and resistance to fatigue were significantly enhanced right after the exercise was applied every day instead of 6 days a week. Up to date, the patient can walk for more than two and half minutes at 10m/min while controlling the on/off time of the stimulator by pushing the toggle switch attached to the walker handle.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.50 no.7
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• pp.122-130
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• 2013

This work proposes a 12b 100MS/s 45nm CMOS four-step pipeline ADC for high-speed digital communication systems requiring high resolution, low power, and small size. The input SHA employs a gate-bootstrapping circuit to sample wide-band input signals with an accuracy of 12 bits or more. The input SHA and MDACs adopt two-stage op-amps with a gain-boosting technique to achieve the required DC gain and high signal swing range. In addition, cascode and Miller frequency-compensation techniques are selectively used for wide bandwidth and stable signal settling. The cascode current mirror minimizes current mismatch by channel length modulation and supply variation. The finger width of current mirrors and amplifiers is laid out in the same size to reduce device mismatch. The proposed supply- and temperature-insensitive current and voltage references are implemented on chip with optional off-chip reference voltages for various system applications. The prototype ADC in a 45nm CMOS demonstrates the measured DNL and INL within 0.88LSB and 1.46LSB, respectively. The ADC shows a maximum SNDR of 61.0dB and a maximum SFDR of 74.9dB at 100MS/s, respectively. The ADC with an active die area of $0.43mm^2$ consumes 29.8mW at 100MS/s and a 1.1V supply.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.9-14
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• 2003

Sleep stages have been useful indicator to check a person's comfortableness in a sleep, But the traditional method of scoring sleep stages with polysomnography based on the integrated analysis of the electroencephalogram(EEG), electrooculogram(EOG), electrocardiogram(ECG), and electromyogram(EMG) is too restrictive to take a comfortable sleep for the participants, While the sympathetic nervous system is predominant during a wakefulness, the parasympathetic nervous system is more active during a sleep, Cardiovascular function is controlled by this autonomic nervous system, So, we have interpreted the heart rate variability(HRV) among sleep stages to find a simple method of classifying sleep stages, Six healthy male college students participated, and 12 night sleeps were recorded in this research, Sleep stages based on the "Standard scoring system for sleep stage" were automatically classified with polysomnograph by measuring EEG, EOG, ECG, and EMG(chin and leg) for the six participants during sleeping, To extract only the ECG signals from the polysomnograph and to interpret the HRV, a Sleep Data Acquisition/Analysis System was devised in this research, The power spectrum of HRV was divided into three ranges; low frequency(LF), medium frequency(MF), and high frequency(HF), It showed that, the LF/HF ratio of the Stage W(Wakefulness) was 325% higher than that of the Stage 2(p＜.05), 628% higher than that of the Stage 3(p＜.001), and 800% higher than that of the Stage 4(p＜.001), Moreover, this ratio of the Stage 4 was 427% lower than that of the Stage REM (rapid eye movement) (p＜.05) and 418% lower than that of the Stage l(p＜.05), respectively, It was observed that the LF/HF ratio decreased monotonously as the sleep stage changes from the Stage W, Stage REM, Stage 1, Stage 2, Stage 3, to Stage 4, While the difference of the MF/(LF+HF) ratio among sleep Stages was not significant, it was higher in the Stage REM and Stage 3 than that of in the other sleep stages in view of descriptive statistic analysis for the sample group.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.703-710
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• 2010

In this study, a tactile stimulator was developed to resolve some problems from the previous version of the system such as system configuration, inappropriate stimulation control and additional problems. The developed tactile stimulator consists of control unit, drive unit and vibrator unit. The control unit was controlled by E-Prime software to generate appropriate vibration pulses. The drive unit supplies enough energy to the vibrator to generate effective stimulation pulses. The vibrator unit consists of small coin type vibrator and velcro, and was made to be attached at the hand easily. The developed tactile stimulator was designed by small-size, light-weight, low-power, simple-fabrication, max 35 channels and little delay time from instruction signal of E-Prime software to vibrator. The duration and magnitude of stimulation was controlled by 10 grades and the problems concerning stimulation control were compensated by wideband frequency ranges. Additionally, the electrical safety was ensured by low voltage operation. Vibrator was made to be attached on finger as well as on any part of the subject. Since this tactile stimulator is developed based on E-Prime software which is widely used in cognitive science, it is believed that this stimulator be suitable for the wide application of cognitive science study.