Sleep Apnea Monitoring and Alarming System-WBAN Using Bluetooth-Implement in Smartphones

Sleep Apnea Monitoring and Alarming System-WBAN using Bluetooth-implement in Smartphones

Abstract:

This system presents a noninvasive method to monitor the aspiratory activities of people who suffer from Sleep Apnea. The proposed system uses air pressure sensor to measure nasal and oral aspiratory patterns. A prototype of the system is built using Arduino Uno Board to process the data gain from the air pressure sensor, transmit the data to Bluetooth Module, and send to user’ssmartphone.The smartphone application will analyze the data and generate alarms when abnormal pauses in breathing are detected. In order to transfer the collected data to the servers inmedical centers or hospitals, we use WIFI/GPRS/3G.

System Architecture:

Figure 1. System Architecture

As shown in Fig.1, there are four modules sensor module, communication module, application module and server module.

Sensor Module:

We choose a sensitive pressure sensor MPXV7002 which are designed for wide range of applications, including respiratory system. The outputs of MPXV7002 are analog voltage from 0.5V to 4.5V that is proportional to the applied pressure ranging from -2kPa to 2kPa.

Communication Module:

The Bluesmirf Gold (Bluetooth module) can be detected by most cell phones with Bluetooth module and can transmit data safely, steadily and efficiently. After getting the sensor data from Buletooth, the mobile equipments can establish connections to high performance networks WIFI and in open sites such as cities and high ways, its connection can be through GPRS/GS network.

Application Module:

The App is designed to record breathing pattern and alarm users when abnormal pauses of breathing occur. Users are expected to initialize the APP by setting the environment noise (N) every time. And we set a reference variable E. Every time the value from the sensor in the range of (N-E, N+E), the app starts timing (T). If T exceeds the range, the APP will stop timing, set T to 0 and keep monitoring. Otherwise, it will continue timing until T=20secs. According to study, most OSA pauses last between 10 and 30 seconds, but some may persist for one minute or longer [7], therefore we set the value T=20secs. The APP will turn to alarm mode and send messages to members in the contact list. The normal respiratory patterns are deleted from buffers, while the abnormal patterns with timestamps are stored and forwarded to database in the hospital. In addition, the APP will draw respiratory patterns Pressure v.s. Time.