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Rudimentary organ function in premature infants is one of the reasons for performing intensive monitoring on premature infants. One of the vital functions that must be monitored is breathing. In this study, we propose a comfortable sensor that uses fiber optic technology to monitor the respiration of premature infants for application in NICU incubators. The device consists of a bending optical fiber integrated into an elastic material which is attached to the outside of an infant’s diaper. The baby’s respiratory movement will cause strain-induced responses in the optical fiber’s sensor, which in turn will change the sensor output intensity. The laser light projected into the optical fiber will not cause heat that could affect the infant, due to the fiber’s maximum power output of 6.02x10−7 W(-32.2 dBm), which is equivalent to 5.18x10−4 calorie/hour. Changes in the intensity of light received by the photodiode are processed first by a signal processing circuit and then by an Arduino UNO microcontroller. The results are displayed on a screen. The system is also equipped with a GSM module, enabling it to send the respiration measurement data periodically via a short message service (SMS) with a certain time interval. The system can also send an information about emergency situations, such as apnea. The results of the experiment, which used a ventilator machine to simulate a baby breathing, showed that this system could measure respiratory rates ranging from 10 - 100 breaths per minute with an error of 0.25%.

The heart is one of the most vital organs in the human body that pumps blood. Therefore, it is very important to monitor the condition of the heart. The condition of a human heart can be diagnosed by measuring the heart rate frequency (beats per minute). We propose a design of a portable electrocardiography (ECG) based on capacitive electrodes for heart rate monitoring. The device consists of electrodes attached to a plastic sheet which is placed on a mattress bed under a patient’s back. Before being processed by Arduino UNO microcontroller, the output signal of the electrodes is processed using signal-conditioning circuit consisting of instrumentation-amplifier circuit, filter, and non-inverting amplifier. The signal processing results obtained from the conditioning circuit are displayed on the LCD screen. The test results show that the QRS complex signal can be clearly detected. Various thickness of the patient cloth also produces different values. With this factor taken into account, cottons with varying thickness (from 0.2 mm up to 0.8 mm) are used to measure the heart rate signals. Measurements with varied cotton thickness shows that the thicker the clothing material is, the weaker and more fluctuative the cardiac signal read by the capacitive ECG design will be. To test the accuracy of the proposed design, the measurement result is compared to ECG PM 10 which is a commonly used device for heart rate monitoring. It shows that experiment on different subjects result in an average error of 0.435%. Based on the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI)’s standard of maximum error (5%), the error rate of the proposed device is still within the range of tolerance.

The design of stethoscope-based heart rate monitoring device for infant incubator applications was reported in this paper. This device utilizes a stethoscope as a heartbeat sensor which was placed on the incubator mattress. This heartbeat signal was then processed by a signal-conditioning electronic circuit. After that, the output was processed by an Arduino Uno microcontroller before being displayed on an LCD in the form of BPM (beat per minutes). The device is also equipped with a buzzer to indicate the absence of a heartbeat. The measurement results showed that the device could measure heartbeats from a baby’s back with a 3.23% possibility of error.

We proposed the design of a respiration system based on laser reflection for an infant incubator that is able to continuously operate. The device consists of a laser diode (λ=650 nm; P=5 mW), a paper reflector, photodiode array as a detector, comparator, microcontroller Arduino UNO R3, and LCD. Also, there is a buzzer for anticipating emergency situations such as apnea. It utilizes the reflection of laser light on paper reflector attached to an infant simulator. Next, the reflection will be received by photodiode array and comparator which connects to the Arduino UNO R3. Then, the result was displayed on an LCD. From the experiment results, it was indicated that the system could measure respiratory rate from 10 up to 70 breaths per minute with an error of 2.357%.