Development of a portable device for home monitoring of snoring

Snoring analysis is important for the diagnosis and treatment of sleep-related breathing disorders (SRBD). Snoring has traditionally been assessed in clinical practice from subjective accounts by the snorer and his/her partner. The use of polysomnographic recording is a standard evaluation procedure for SRBD patients. However, it is expensive and is not suitable for long term monitoring. This paper describes the development of a portable microcontroller based device for long-term, home monitoring of snoring. By analyzing the temporal feature of the snoring sound, this device can output the total snoring count, average number of snores per hour, and the number of intermittent snoring. In our tests, the average success rate in identifying snores is over 85% in a lab environment and around 70% in a home.