Improvement of Dynamic Respiration Monitoring Through Sensor Fusion of Accelerometer and Gyro-sensor

In this paper, we suggest a method to improve the fusion of an accelerometer and gyro sensor by using a Kalman filter to produce a more high-quality respiration signal to supplement the weakness of using a single accelerometer. To evaluate our proposed algorithm’s performance, we developed a chest belt-type module. We performed experiments consisting of aerobic exercise and muscular exercises with 10 subjects. We compared the derived respiration signal from the accelerometer with that from our algorithm using the standard respiration signal from the piezoelectric sensor in the time and frequency domains during the aerobic and muscular exercises. We also analyzed the time delay to verify the synchronization between the output and standard signals. We confirmed that our algorithm improved the respiratory rate’s detection accuracy by 4.6% and 9.54% for the treadmill and leg press, respectively, which are dynamic. We also confirmed a small time delay of about 0.638 s on average. We determined that real-time monitoring of the respiration signal is possible. In conclusion, our suggested algorithm can acquire a more high-quality respiration signal in a dynamic exercise environment away from a limited static environment to provide safer and more effective exercises and improve exercise sustainability.