FBG-based smart bed system for healthcare applications

This paper presents a smart fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensor system with an unobtrusive and easy-to-use FBG sensor bed, which automatically monitors the behavior of bedridden patients and their vital signs based on indicative spatio-temporal signature for adaptive intervention triggering and activity planning. We present the subtle design, fabrication, calibration, implementation and deployment issues of the FBG pressure sensors to be used in hospitals or nursing homes to prevent bedsore generation, patient falling out of the bed, and life-threatening situations such as patient's heart rate weakening, breathing pattern change, etc. Through trials conducted in the laboratory for respiratory rate monitoring with a sample group of 10 subjects, the system showed maximum error of +/- 1 breaths per minute as compared to manual counting.