Abstract:
Foot drop (FD) is the inability to lift the front part
of the foot from the ground. It causes the toes to drag along the
ground while walking and can cause fall and injuries. A patient
may have FD when there is a loss of communication between the
central nervous system and the peroneal nerve. It can be
corrected by functional electrical stimulation (FES) of the
peroneal nerve by applying pulses of a given duration,
amplitude, and frequency. In this paper, we are proposing a
microcontroller based FES system that produces trapezoidal,
charge-balanced, biphasic stimulus output with near-zero DC
level. In this design, we use a programmable ESP32
microcontroller with a built-in DAC, uniphasic to biphasic
converter circuit, current amplifier and step-up transformer.
Stimulation amplitude, pulse width and frequency of the
stimulation pulse can easily be adjusted by using an adjustable
knob. The cost of the overall system is very low and can be built
using standard electronic components.
