Medical Sensor System

Abstract

In this research a sensor patch for newborns is proposed. This sensor patch is a device which would be attached to the skin of a newborn in order to monitor vital health signs such as: temperature, heart rate, respiration rate and oxygen saturation. Furthermore, a bilirubin sensor will be included to check the newborn for jaundice. Thereafter, the measured data should be communicated wirelessly to a base station. What happens with the data after the base station is beyond the scope of this research. One of the main challenges is energy efficiency since the patch should be small enough to fit on a newborn whichmeans the battery should be small as well. Additionally the sensor patch should be able to operate for 3 days continuously. The overall design is divided into three subsystems: the battery control system, the microcontroller and communication and the sensors. This report focuses on the sensor part of the total system. After analysis of different kind of sensors, the SI7051 is chosen for the temperature sensor since it is themost accurate and energy efficient. In order to measure the respiration rate an acceleration sensor was chosen to be the most suitable within the system requirements. For the acceleration sensor the IIS2DLPC was selected. In order to measure the heart rate and oxygen saturation a PPG sensor is designed. Finally, the bilirubin sensor is designed which uses PPG as well. However, the designed sensors still need calibration by empirical experiments in order to obtain accurate results