Abstract
A procedure is proposed to estimate an analogue-to-digital converter's signal-to-noise plus distortion ratio using the histogram method. The procedure provides results that are in close agreement with the ones obtained with the spectral analysis and sinewave fitting methods. It is shown that the errors obtained by using former implementations of the histogram method are due to not considering the input stimulus probability density function, and it is shown how these errors can be rectified.

Abstract
High levels of dependability are required to promote the adherence by public and medical communities to wearable medical devices. The study presented herein addresses fault detection and diagnosis in these systems. The main objective resides on correctly classifying the captured physiological signals, in order to distinguish whether the actual cause of a detected anomaly is a wearer health condition or a system functional flaw. Data fusion techniques, namely fuzzy logic, artificial neural networks, decision trees and naive Bayes classifiers are employed to process the captured data to increase the trust levels with which diagnostics are made. Concerning the wearer condition, additional information is provided after classifying the set of signals into normal or abnormal (e.g., arrhythmia, tachycardia and bradycardia). As for the monitoring system, once an abnormal situation is detected in its operation or in the sensors, a set of tests is run to check if actually the wearer shows a degradation of his health condition or if the system is reporting erroneous values. Selected features from the vital signals and from quantities that characterize the system performance serve as inputs to the data fusion algorithms for Patient and System Status diagnosis purposes. The algorithms performance was evaluated based on their sensitivity, specificity and accuracy. Based on these criteria the naive Bayes classifier presented the best performance.

Abstract

In the last decade the advances in wearable technology have driven and transformed performance monitoring in fitness and wellness applications, surveillance in extreme (working) conditions, and management of chronic diseases. These innovations have opened a whole new perspective on health and social care, challenged by vast expenditures in ageing societies.