SYNTROFOS: A Wearable Device for Vital Sign Monitoring, Hardware and Signal Processing Aspects

Healthcare wearables have become very powerful and useful devices that are able to detect and monitor vital signs. Through recent applications and products, they have proven to be particularly effective in detecting symptoms of COVID-19. In this paper, we present an optimized design of a device, named SYNTROFOS, capable of detecting heart rate, respiration rate, and temperature. The analog and digital hardware employs off-the-shelf components, while the signal processing algorithms are optimized for implementation on low-power, low-cost, and small-sized memory microcontrollers. The decision-making and visualization interface is extremely simplified, indicating only good and bad states. Via the attached BLE Beacon the system sends the altering messages to close environment or remote medical staff. During the testing, significant noise immunity and satisfactory accuracy, less than 1 beat (breaths) per minute, are achieved. Although the presentation includes the overall system architecture, the focus is on hardware design challenges and optimized signal processing algorithms.