Özet:

Despite the abundance of telemetric applications for ecology, behavior and physiology of marine life, few efforts were reported about the use of acoustic telemetry for SCUBA divers. Such systems are required to study the medical conditions of some type of divers such as diabetic ones. This study communicates the details of a study to design, manufacture and test a prototype system that measures the blood glucose while diving and transmit the results in real time to the surface. The system design consists of a subcutaneous sensor to measure interstitial glycaemia, a microcontroller based RF receiver board in a custom built waterproof casing, a pair of acoustic modems to transmit data underwater and a computer on the surface to log the received data. The whole system is tested to 11 Bar in hyperbaric chamber. The reliability of the acoustical data link was tested in a swimming pool where an acoustical data link is established between two computers located at surface. The acoustical link experiments were successful for 20 minutes of simulated signals for the depth, interstitial glycaemia, breathing frequency and temperature information. The overall efficiency was 80.1%, with 474 bytes sent and 378 bytes received. The bandwidth of the acoustical link is very low (max 4 reading/min) but is adequate for glycaemia monitoring that can be as low as 1 reading every 5 minutes. Finally the system recorded the interstitial glucose of divers in 8 dives successfully and will be beneficial for studying diabetic divers Keywords: Diabetes; Underwater; Diving; Glycaemia; Subsea; Real time monitoring DOI: 10.17350/HJSE19030000086 Full Text:

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