A High-Fidelity Acquisition System for Snore Signals: Design and Implementation

Many studies have been done on analyzing snore signals for detecting obstructive sleep apnea, a common sleep-disordered breathing. However, none of them emphasizes on the acquisition techniques of snore signals, which play an important role in determining the accuracy of the diagnostic results. To address the above concern, this paper proposes a high-fidelity system for acquiring snore signals. Design considerations, such as background acoustical noise, electromagnetic interference, dynamic range, sound intensity, patient safety, patient comfort, and graphical user interface, are discussed with experiments to test the robustness of the proposed system. Experimental results show a significant reduction in background acoustical noise and electromagnetic interference after the implementation of the system, yielding snore signals of better quality. Besides that, both the patients and the clinicians are comfortable with the system design and implementation.