A sleep apnoea keeper in a wearable device for Continuous detection and screening during daily life

Abstract

Sleep apnoea syndrome is one of the most common sleep disorders which affects around one out of every 100 people. There is some evidence that sleep apnoea may be linked to hypertension, strokes and heart attacks. The aim of this work is to develop a wearable biomedical system for the continuous and real-time monitoring of the sleep apnoea disease at home. Embedded in a comfortable glove, the proposed wearable device acquires the photoplethysmographic (PPG) signal coming from a standard SpO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> wrapped sensor placed in one of the fingers. Real-time heart rate variability analysis is performed from NN intervals measured in the PPG signal in order to activate an alarm if the number of sleep apnoea events cross a guard level. Through a radio frequency link in the ISM band, the glove communicates with a Internet gateway connected with a remote station for continuous data analysis, monitoring and alarm catch.