  Pulse wave measurements provide vital information in medical diagnosis. For
this reason, a measurement system is developed for determining the transient
time of the pulse wave between the heart and the ear. To detect pressure
variations in the sealed ear canal, caused by the arriving pulse wave, an
in-ear sensor is developed which uses heart sounds as time reference.
Furthermore, for extracting the heart sounds from the pressure measurements and
calculating the pulse wave transient time, a MATLAB-based algorithm is
described. An embedded microcontroller based measurement board is presented,
which realizes an interface between the sensor and the computer for signal
processing.
