Pulse Oximeter Improvement with an ADC-DAC Feedback Loop and a Radial Reflectance Sensor

Pulse oximeter circuitry must meet several design constraints, including the ability to separate a small pulsatile signal component from a large signal baseline. This paper describes pulse oximeter design changes that produced order-of-magnitude improvements in signal quality. The primary changes were (a) the replacement of an analog sample-and-hold-based differentiator circuit with an ADC-DAC feedback loop and (b) the replacement of a side-by-side reflectance sensor design with a radial sensor arrangement that maximizes the pulsatile-to-baseline signal ratio