Human Pulse and Respiration Monitoring: Reconfigurable and Scalable Balloon-Shaped Fiber Wearables

Wearable technologies have achieved tremendous success in medical-grade human vital signal monitoring. Herein, a unique geometry (balloon shaped) and usage of very economical polymer embedded single mode fiber based modal interferometry that not only overcome the mechanical strength restrictions of most of the fiber wearables but also fulfil the two most important and necessary requirements of any wearable system: flexibility and stretchability are reported. Here, the human pulse rate and respiration rhythm are successfully monitored by placing the wearables at appropriate positions on different human subjects. The wearable system when compared with the other two commercial approaches: piezoelectric and Photoplethysmography shows better results in terms of pulse visibility. The wrist pulse detection by the proposed system shows 72 bpm and can distinguish different human pulse parameters such as main peak, tidal peak, dicrotic wave peak, and dicrotic notch. Further, three volunteers' heart beat values obtained from the proposed system very well match with the commercial heart-rate meter thereby showing the alternative and better approach for futuristic health monitoring wearable device.