Electroshock Weapon Measurements: Instrumentation Requirements and Limitations Paulter N 1* , Jenkins D 2 and Ichikawa N 3 1 National Institute of Standards and Technology, MD 20899, USA 2 State College, The Pennsylvania State University, PA 16804-0030, USA 3 Kogakuin University, Shinjuku, Tokyo 163-8677, Japan * Corresponding author: Paulter N, National Institute of Standards and Technology, 100 Bureau Drive, Gaithersburg, MD 20899, USA, Tel: 240-483-5947; E-mail: paulter@nist.gov Received date: March 14, 2017; Accepted date: April 04, 2017; Published date: April 12, 2017 Copyright: © 2017 Paulter N, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Abstract Electroshock Weapons (ESWs) are a commonly used tool in the escalation of force arsenal for law enforcement and the military around the world. The ESWs provides a high-voltage low- current electrical shock (a pulse burst) that can temporarily incapacitate its target (typically a human). This shock is usually of sufficient energy to cause the individual to become temporarily incapacitated for up to a few seconds after the discharge is completed. It is important to accurately know the output of the ESW because of the serious safety ramifications if the ESW fails to operate properly. However, these transient ESW pulse outputs may have frequency content exceeding 100 MHz while simultaneously have durations greater than 10 s, and the impedance of the target may vary amongst targets and may vary between pulses of a given pulse burst for a given target. These facts greatly increase the challenges in performing high-fidelity reproducible measurements of the ESW transient signals. To ensure that the ESW operates properly requires special measurement instruments because of the bandwidth, duration, and amplitude of the output signals. Moreover, accurate measurement capability supports modelling and subsequent understanding of the physiological effects of ESW exposure. Keywords: Electroshock weapons; Transient signals; Electrical pulses Introduction Te electrical output of the ESW is a pulse train burst (Figures 1 and 2) containing many tens to hundreds of nominally identical electrical pulses with a total pulse burst duration ranging from less than 1 s to greater than 10 s. Te pulses in a burst may have fast transitions ranging from approximately a couple of nanoseconds to a more than a few microseconds in duration [1-3]. Te pulses may be bipolar and may exhibit aberrations, where these aberrations are dependent on the electrical load attached to the ESW. Consequently, waveform parameters should be extracted from the pulse train that accurately and reproducibly describe the output of the ESW. Current commercially-available of-the-shelf instruments cannot provide the necessary measurement capability to capture the detail and duration of the ESW current or high-voltage outputs. We describe how measurement system shortfalls infuence waveform fdelity and provide guidance on minimally-acceptable system performance requirements. Although we have developed a measurement system to provide the requisite metrological capability, we hope that the information presented here would elicit interest in the development of capable measurement systems suitable for use by metrology and calibration labs to support medical research labs and ESW technology developers [4]. Figure 1: Pulse train from diferent ESW models. Plot (a) show the high-voltage output with the sampling resolution or interval set to 2.5 μs. Plot (b) shows the current output with a sampling resolution of 1.28 μs. Te variation of the peak amplitude in (a) is caused by a nonopotimal sampling interval (or resolution). Measurement system general considerations A general diagram for an ESW measurement system is shown in Figure 2. Tables 1 and 2 contain performance specifcations for the expected components of the measurement system. Tese specifcations were determined to be applicable for metrology-quality measurements of the output of ESW. Figure 2 shows the testing of an ESW being tested, where the dotted lines show a measurement confguration for measuring the current output of the ESW. Journal of Biomedical Systems and Emerging Technologies Paulter et al., J Biomed Syst Emerg Technol 2017, 4:1 Research Article Open Access J Biomed Syst Emerg Technol, an open access journal Volume 4 • Issue 1 • 1000113 B i o m e d i c a l S y s t e m s a n d E m e r g i n g T e c h n o l o g i e s