Forced Van der Pol oscillator based modeling of cardiac pacemakers

Abstract

A classical Van der Pol based forced oscillator is used to model the cardiac pacemakers to give results similar to those achieved with modified relaxation oscillators. Cardiac pacemakers can be modeled accurately with relaxation oscillator with some complex changes that make it difficult to tune the model matching with the exact behavior of the cardiac potential generators because of different varying parameters. The proposed model is simple and can easily be tuned with two parameters which make it attractive and useful. The model is based on external forcing function and it is not modeled as self-excited oscillator. The sinusoidal forcing function is applied and its behavior is controlled using two different damping parameters. The results achieved in this way are exactly the same as obtained with the relaxation oscillators. Matlab is used to simulate the model.