Hacker and our pacers

• by ElectricFrank
• 2008-03-15 06:03:26
• General Posting
• 1185 views
• 2 comments

I have studied the recent research article on pacemaker hacking and done some of my own. To start with the following article on frequency use in the world shows that there are radio stations in Europe of1 million watts or more on the frequency band mentioned in the hacking article.

(155 to 281 kHz: This is another AM broadcasting band in Europe and parts of Asia. In Europe, there are numerous high powered (1,000,000 watts or more) stations here. These stations are capable of covering an entire European nation like France or Germany with reliable signals around the clock. Although ionospheric propagation is not good at these frequencies, the high powers used means that many of these broadcasters can be heard along the Atlantic seaboard during the fall and winter)

So pacemakers must be designed to be insensitive to signal such as this at over a few inches maximum. Otherwise anywhere within a mile or 2 of a large transmitter like mentioned could easily cause problems. I measured the signal from my Medtronic telephone monitor and could only detect it at 3 inches. Beyond that it faded into the noise of all the electronic stuff in the air these days.

So I'm not worried.

frank