Smartphone Plastic Optical Fiber Sensors

Abstract

Telehealth is quickly becoming an essential tool in delivering medical care. It can easily be used to monitor the states of patients who are located at remote locations away from hospitals. For example, breathing rate is one of important physiological parameters requiring monitoring, since it can be used in the diagnosis of respiratory diseases. However, the tools of remote monitoring have to be cheap and easy in use. These requirements can be satisfied by smartphone sensor based on plastic optical fiber (POF). The proposed solution is an all-fiber sensor where the flashlight acts as a light source and the camera acts as a photodetector. First of all, smartphones have become ubiquitous. POF, on the other hand, is not expensive. Hence, the proposed combination can be a cost-effective solution for implementing telehealth. In the work, the technique of intensity modulation in POF is adapted for sensing breathing rate. The measurements are analyzed in both time and frequency domains. In addition, multiplexing is also a promising direction for conducting sensing in optical fibers, since it can be used to measure multiple parameters. The possibility of implementing it in POF will be considered as well.