Optimisation of an inductive power link for biomedical data acquisition systems.

In 1909 Nicola Tesla stated: ``When wireless is perfectly applied the earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole''. This vision is finally becoming reality now that the next wave in the era of computing, the Internet of Things, is rapidly gaining momentum. The ``virtual'' internet as we know it today is becoming more and more ``physical'' and this has lead to the creation of a broad range of smart environments such as smart cars, smart grids and smart homes. Under this impulse, also the medical market is undergoing severe changes. Personal health systems are getting more and more attention because of the demographics of aging, the increase of quality adjusted life years and the related economic impact. Life science researchers are continuously investigating novel methods to enhance rehabilitation and patient empowerment. However the design procedure of a wearable or implantable system typically progresses slowly due to the challenging exercise of translating new knowledge and understanding of living systems into the development of innovative personal health devices. 

This work elaborately investigates the feasibility of deploying a versatile tool to assess and evaluate such novel research concepts and to speed up the translation process from novel ideas into personal health acquisition technology. Such a personal health sensor platform is a versatile signal acquisition instrument that is easily adaptable for any kind of application and assures high performance, but also is unobtrusive to wear and comfortable to use.
A first considerable part of the work focuses on the development of such a tool and in a second part, two case studies are evaluated.
A first case study involves neonatal personal healthcare, in which the platform is used to explore novel vital signal acquisition techniques at the NICU. A second case study aims at evaluating heart contractility by measuring cardiac wall accelerations. In both applications fields numerous in vivo experiments have been carried out.

In the final part of this dissertation, longterm health acquisition is investigated. Wireless power transfer is introduced at the bedside. As a proof of concept, a platform containing a matrix of magnetic energy transmitters has been developed and integrated into a mattress. This system is able to feed one or more exploration units, attached to the patient, with the purpose of wirelessly recording vital signals over an extended period of time. Moreover, the platform embeds online optimization software to deal with vertical as well as horizontal sensor node movements to avoids excessive radiation exposure to the patient.