Measuring and Transmitting Vital Body Signs Using

MEMS Sensors
Murat GULER, M.Sc.
Istanbul Technical University, Mechanical Engineering, System Dynamics and Control Lab,
34437, Gumussuyu, Istanbul, Turkey
murat.gulergmam.gov.tr
Seniz ERTUGRUL, Ph.D.
Istanbul Technical University, Mechanical Engineering, System Dynamics and Control Lab,
34437, Gumussuyu, Istanbul, Turkey
senizgitu.edu.tr
Abstract -With the advancements in technology and science, transmitted with RF technology and monitored in real-time. The
electronics have been getting smaller and smaller, which enables electronic components and the sensor have been placed into the
researchers and scientist to weave the electronics and garment to form the ART-Shirt.
interconnections into the fabric. This new technology enables to
establish a new concept called "Electronic-Textiles (e-Textiles)", II. SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
which allows cost-effective and efficient solutions for various The ARF-Shirt vital body signs monitoring system is shown
applications.
In this paper, the main idea is monitoring vital body signs by in Fig. 1.
placing the electronic devices into a garment in a compact way. MEMS RF-TRANSMITTER I
ACCELEROMETER RF-RECEIVER CONNECTOR BLOCK
Among many vital body signs, posture, respiration rate and
SC-2075
body activities like walking, running have been monitored. The ADXL202E -*ATX-34 ~ IARX-34 PC-04
NLABVIEW
measurements have been performed with a MEMS based +5V + 5V DATA ACQUISITION BOARD
accelerometer which is widely used in many applications. The
electronic components have been placed into the fabric to form
the ARF-Shirt to monitor vital body signs. Collected data from ARF-SHIRT
10 subjects with ARF-Shirt system have been transmitted by RF Fig. 1. ARF-Shirt vital body signs monitoring system.
transmission and monitored in real-time. The ARF-Shirt system contains mainly two parts. One of
After forming the ARF-Shirt, data were collected from
subjects and then analyzed with Labview. The characteristic them is the mobile part on the ARF-Shirt which contains
amplitude and frequency ranges were obtained for each activity. ADXL202E MEMS based accelerometer, 5V power supply unit
With this project, measuring a vital body sign with MEMS and ATX-34 RF-transmitter, the second and the fixed part
accelerometer, transmitting the data by RF Transmission, signal contains ARX-34 RF-receiver, SC-2075 connector block, NI
processing and analysis with Labview in real-time have been PCI-6024E data acquisition board and a computer with P4
realized. processor. The signals have been processed in Labview.
Key Words: Electronic Textiles, Smart Fabrics, MEMS
Sensors, RF Transmission III. ARF - SHIRT
I. INTRODUCTION On the ARF-Shirt in Fig. 2, the electronic components
mounted with velcro to make it easier to wear and protecting the
The number of potential applications for e-textiles is electronic components from damage while wearing the shirt.
tremendous; they are mainly used in three different areas:
medical monitoring, athletics and military uses. In military,
the e-textiles are used to comfort the soldier by regulating the
temperature and by supplying necessary conditions, to
provide technical superiority over the enemies and the
monitor the soldier's health [1, 2]. The use of e-textiles for
medical purposes has become also very popular in the last
decade, as they can be worn in regular, everyday life. Thus
they can provide information about the desired parameters
throughout the day and alert the person if some anomaly in
these parameters occurs [3, 4, and 5].
Initially, the goal of this study was to investigate the
possible use of commercial off-the shelf products such as
MEMS-based sensors which are very cheap and readily
available [6]. As a result of the study, the human posture,
walking and running activities have been detected and a very
important vital body sign, respiration rate has been measured
by using a MEMS based accelerometer. The data has been Fig. 2. ARF-Shirt
The produced PWM signals from the MEMS accelerometer
1.5
have been sent to the RF-transmitter module. The r r r r

accelerometer and RF-transmitter module have been supplied

with 5V DC. The required power has been obtained from a 10
circuit containing a 9V battery and LM7805 regulator.
ADXL202E has an approximately 14 bit analog to digital 0.5-
converter [7]. The acquired signals from the body don't
include high frequencies so ADXL202E is an appropriate -a)
0
sensor with its 12,5/g percent sensitivity to use in this project.
The output of the accelerometer, in the form of PWM -0.5
signal has been sent to DAQ Card by RF-transmission. The
ATX-34 and ARX-34 RF modules transmit the data in the
-1
434 MHz bandwidth with the 2400 bps data rate [8]. The
digital output of the RF-receiver module has been connected
to the analog input of the DAQ Card. NI PCI-6024E DAQ -1.5
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
Card has 16 single-ended analog inputs with a 12 bit time (sec)
resolution [9]. The PWM signal has been sampled at the 200 Fig. 4. Acceleration vs. time data for body posture
KHz sampling frequency and acquiring 4000 samples.
Sampled signals have been acquired in Labview 7.0 and its Preliminary experiments with ARF-Shirt have involved
duty cycle has been measured to calculate the acceleration in respiration rate measurement, walking and running activities
real-time [10, 11]. The acceleration has been calculated with detection. The acceleration vs. time data has been obtained. As
the (1) and (2) as given below. seen in Fig. 5., the amplitude and the frequency of the
diaphragm movement, walking and running activities are
TI / T2 TT2a=Og different from each other [12, 13].

I
a(g) (1)
16
T1 / T2 a=lg 1.4

1.4 -X

1.2
a()(T1 /T2)
0.50
0.125 (2)
,
0.8
After the monitoring and storing acceleration data in real- .2
0.6
time, the characteristic amplitude and frequency values were a1)
a1)
0.4
obtained for each activity by analyzing the data. Then the
amplitude and frequency ranges have been determined for the 0.2
classification of respiration rate and body activities like
walking and running.
The ADXL202E MEMS based accelerometer has been -0 1 Running
Walking un"nn Respiration

placed onto body as its x and y axes are parallel to ground and 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
perpendicular to human body as in Fig. 3 [12]. time (sec)
Fig. 5. Acceleration vs. time data
There is a relation between the amplitude and the frequency of
the diaphragm movement, walking and running activities as seen
in (3) and (4).
Freq.Running )Freq.Walking )Freq.Diaph.Mov. (3)
Amp.Running )AmP.walking )AmP.Diaph.Mov. (4)
With the ARF-Shirt vital body signs monitoring system,
respiration rate in stationary position, walking and running
activities have been repeated. The Fig. 6 and Fig. 7 have been
At the stationary position, the body posture; supine, prone
obtained after these activities. In figures, the sampled square
and upright standing have been detected. The MEMS_based wave signal, the FFT analysis of this signal, the obtained
sensor produces acceleration around Ig at supine position,
acceleration-time signal, the measured amplitude (upper right)
around 0 g at standing and around -1g at prone position as and frequency (lower right) values of the signal and LED
seen in Fig. 4 [13].
indicators showing the activity can be seen.
 TABLE ll
TBE BouNDARY VALUES OF TBE AMPLITUDE AND FREQuENcY FOR ACTIVITIES
Activity Amplitude (g) Frequency (Hz)
Diaphragm Movement <0.055 <1
Walking Activity 0.055-0.165 1-2.20
Running Activity >0.165 >2.20

With the obtained values after these experiments, it has been

seen that the response of system and the real activities are the
same. While the obtained amplitude ranges have yielded 75%
correct results, the frequency ranges have yielded 100% correct
results.
In this study, the human posture, walking and running
activities have been detected and a very important vital body
sign, respiration rate has been measured by using a MEMS
based accelerometer. The data has been transmitted with RF
technology and monitored in real-time. The electronic
components and the sensor have been placed into the garment to
form the ARF-Shirt.
During the transmission of the data with RF technology, the
antenna quality and battery power effect the quality of the data
transmission. In this study, the duration of high quality data
transmission was 8 hours in the laboratory environment. The
extension of the time reduces the transmission distance and the
IV. EXPERIMENTS AND RESULTS quality of the signal. The given time duration may be considered
To achieve more reliable results and to determine as adequate in a military application.
amplitude and frequency ranges of activities, different Frequency of the square wave signal produced from the
measurements for the same activities have been repeated with MEMS based accelerometer determines the sampling frequency
10 subjects between 18-25 age group by using a treadmill. of the activities. Increasing the frequency of the ADXL202E
From among 12 measurements, 3 of them were used for accelerometer may be considered. A lower level application
respiration rate measurements, 5 of them were for walking program faster than Labview relatively could be suggested for
and 4 of them were for running activity detection. In Table I, the real time application.
the activity type, the measured amplitude and frequency Since one channel RF receiver/transmitter was available for
values for these activities, the age, weight and gender this study, only one axes of the two-axis accelerometer has been
information of subjects have been given. used. The number of the axis and channels should be increased.
In the further studies, another important vital body sign, the
TABLE I body temperature could also be measured. The integration level
TiE DETAILED RESULTS OF MEASUREMENTS
of the electronic components and textile can be improved so that
No I cti ity Amplitude Frequency Measured
more flexible, more comfortable and more functional garments
Age Weight G Range (g) Range (Hz) Value can be designed.
Age_ (Kg)
1 25 55 M Resp. 0.0067-0.023 0.36-0.52 25resp/min ACKNOWLEDGMENT
2 22 65 M Resp. 0.0089 0.051 0.27-0.37 22 resp/min
3 19 48 F Resp. 0.0048-0.017 0.17-0.66 27 resp/min This research has been supported by Istanbul Technical
4 25 80 M Walking 0.042-0.078 0.93 1.16 University Research Funds, Project No:3 1614.
5 23 70 M Walking 0.087-0.127 1.28-1.59
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