Contactless Sleep Apnea Detection on Smartphones

– We present a contactless solution for detecting sleep apnea events on smartphones. To achieve this, we introduce a novel system that monitors the minute chest and abdomen movements caused by breathing on smartphones. Our system works with the phone away from the subject and can simultaneously identify and track the fine-grained breathing movements from multiple subjects. We do this by transforming the phone into an active sonar system that emits frequency-modulated sound signals and listens to their reflections; our design monitors the minute changes to these reflections to extract the chest movements. Results from a home bedroom environment shows that our design operates efficiently at distances of up to a meter and works even with the subject under a blanket. Building on the above system, we develop algorithms that identify various sleep apnea events including obstructive apnea, central apnea, and hypopnea from the sonar reflections. We deploy our system at the UW Medicine S...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2015
• Where: MOBISYS
• Authors: Rajalakshmi Nandakumar, Shyamnath Gollakota, Nathaniel Watson
• Keywords: Computer Networks, MOBISYS 2015