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Vol: 58(72) No: 1 / March 2013      

Low Power Wearable Device for Sleep Disorders Monitoring
Cristian Rotariu
Department of Computer Science, \"Gheorghe Asachi\" Technical University of Iasi, Dimitrie Mangeron, No. 27, 700050, Iasi, Romania, phone: +40-232-231343, e-mail: cr.rotariu@yahoo.com
Robert Lupu
Department of Computer Science, \"Gheorghe\" Asachi Technical University of Iasi, Dimitrie Mangeron, No. 27, 700050, Iasi, Romania
George Vieriu
Department of Computer Science, \"Gheorghe Asachi\" Technical University of Iasi, Dimitrie Mangeron, No. 27, 700050, Iasi, Romania


Keywords: accelerometers, remote monitoring system, sleep disorders, wireless low power

Abstract
In this paper is described the research for the design and realization of a flexible, scalable and cost-effective medical remote monitoring system for the detection of sleep-related disorders. The use of wireless low-power devices is suitable for continuous long-time monitoring of human respiration for a number of medical conditions requiring analysis of respiratory rhythm, sleep-related breathing disorder or ischemic heart disease. The proposed system is mainly used to monitor patients suffering from obstructive sleep apnea episodes, with a high degree of accuracy within hospital or their homes. The patient’s respiration rate are continuously measured by using wireless accelerometer-based devices and then transferred to a central monitoring station via a wireless sensor network. The central monitoring station runs a patient respiration monitor application that receives the patient’s respiration rate from network and activates an alert when a sleep apnea episode is detected. A user-friendly Graphical User Interface was developed for the respiration monitor application to display the received respiration rates from the selected monitored patient and the sleep apnea alerts. A prototype of the system has been developed, implemented and tested.

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