A Sleep Monitoring System Using Ultrasonic Sensors

Sleep is an important activity for every human being. Proper and balanced periods of sleep are essential for an individual’s health state. Sleep posture is related to the quality of sleep. Therefore, during sleep, it is crucial to study the sleep postures and limbs’ movements. For some diseases, body positions and movements are intra-related (i.e., restless legs syndrome and patellofemoral pain syndrome). We propose a sleep monitoring system based on ultrasonic sensors. Our system does not need any on-body sensors to wear, nor does it need any kind of additional action from the users outside the daily routine. Ultrasonic sensors can be used for finding out the distance from the sensor to any object/subject that is in front of it. By wiring ultrasonic sensors with an Arduino Mega board, we can calculate this distance. Later, we put that sensor value on to ‘Processing’ software for further data analysis. The main contributions of this paper are to find if the bed is empty or not, if the person is sitting or lying on the bed, and to find out at which posture the subject is sleeping. We present the result of our analysis as a medical report, which will help a doctor for finding the sleeping posture of a person and what might be the reason for body pain, fatigue, or other sleep disorders. Our proposed method can be used in normal households with a minimal arrangement.