Plastic optical fiber microbend sensor used as breathing sensor

This paper we demonstrated a new plastic optical fiber sensor for breathing rate/breathing pattern monitoring. The proposed sensor design is based on microbending effect which is created through a sandwich microbender structure. The sensor records breathing signals without direct skin contact. The sensing system consists of a transceiver operated at 660nm, a sensor mat made of a section of plastic optical fiber and a computer or a hand held device for display. Tests conducted on human subjects show that our sensor has a typical signal to noise ratio better than 10 and has an accuracy of 2 bpm/min.