A Wearable Respiration and Pulse Monitoring System Based on PVDF Piezoelectric Film

Abstract

A novel wearable sensor system was developed for monitoring respiration and pulse using polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) piezoelectric films as sensor materials. Due to the different signal intensity between respiration and pulse, a “double-sided arch” structure and a “thin-shell” structure were designed and fabricated as substrates for the respiratory sensor and pulse sensor, respectively. These sensors installed on belts can be easily tied on the chest, abdomen, or wrist for comfortable fit. In order to obtain clear respiratory and pulse signals from the sensor patch, some high-quality signal processing modules were designed. The digital signals were transmitted to a computer via Bluetooth and displayed by LabVIEW software. The fundamental principle and functional verification of the developed sensor system were described in this study. By comparing the sensor signals from the proposed structure with those of flat structure, it can be concluded that the proposed sensor is more sensitive and stable than its flat counterpart. In addition, the whole sensor system has the features of ease of use and comfortable to wear. All these make the proposed sensor system a promising sensing device for respiration and pulse real time monitoring.