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Abstract

Cardiovascular diseases often occur without prior indications hence, causing the number of deaths due to sudden cardiac arrest to be on the rise here in Singapore. The use of cardiac pacemakers, predominantly on those with total heart block and the sick sinus syndrome, accounts for 95% of the indication for pacemakers implanted in this country. Moreover, given our ageing population, it is anticipated that the need for pacemaker implantation will continue to rapidly increase.

Typically, a cardiac pacemaker needs to be set in accordance with the patient’s medical condition before being implanted inside the body. This means that any form of new data required by the patient or the pacemaker is made unfeasible; seeing that minor surgery will be needed.

In this study, a cardiac pacemaker antenna has been designed and proposed to function as a communication pathway between the implanted pacemaker and medical personnel by means of external devices. In this way, data about the health of the patient or the cardiac pacemaker can be easily downloaded and further changes in settings as and when specified by doctors may also be effortlessly uploaded. In addition, the presence of the cardiac pacemaker antenna omits painful surgical procedures that a cardiac patient needs to go through whenever the pacemaker settings require a change.

An S-shaped pacemaker antenna was designed, fabricated and tested herein. The antenna responded at a frequency of 433MHz which is in line with that of the Industrial Scientific Medical (ISM) frequency. At 433MHz also, the patch antenna was found to have a reasonable size and penetration hence, making it favourable for communication purposes.

Being light-weight and smaller in size as compared to many other antennas under research, this novel designed S-shaped antenna holds a constructive outlook for future use in detecting abnormal heart signals; and consequently, facilitates in an early detection of a possible cardiovascular disorder.