Inertial Sensor-Based Respiration Analysis

In this paper, we propose a system that is capable of detecting the breath rate of an athlete. Furthermore, we investigate equivalences with the tidal volume over the inclination angle of the thorax to analyze correlations with the respiratory minute volume which is the product of the breath rate and the tidal volume. Inertial-based sensors such as gyroscopes and accelerometers are utilized to analyze thoracic extensions. To counteract interferences with body movements, we use two inertial sensors. One sensor is attached on the chest of an athlete, while the other is located on the back. Therefore, thoracic extensions can be determined differentially. To extract the required data out of two signals, the system has to be calibrated first so the axes of the sensors are aligned to each other. All calculations are done on a digital signal processor that is implemented on the system.