The Modeling of the Differential Measurement of Air Pressure for Non-intrusive Sleep Monitoring Sensor System

The respiratory and heart beat signals are the fundamental physiological signals for sleep monitoring in the home. Using the air mattress sensor system, the respiration and heart beat movements can be measured without any harness or sensor on the subject's body which makes long term measurement difficult and troublesome. The differential measurement technique between two air cells is adopted to enhance the sensitivity. The concept of the balancing tube between two air cells is suggested to increase the robustness against postural changes during the measurement period. With this balancing tube, the meaningful frequency range could be selected by the pneumatic filter method. The mathematical model for the air mattress and balancing tube was suggested and the validation experiments were performed for step and sinusoidal input. The results show that the balancing tube can eliminate the low frequency component between two cells effectively. This technique was applied to measure the respiration and heart beat on the bed, which shows the potential applications for sleep monitoring device in home. With the analysis of the waveform, respiration intervals and heart beat intervals were calculated and compared with the signal from conventional methods. The results show that the measurement from air mattress with balancing tube can be used for monitoring respiration and heart beat in various situations.