Design and experiment of an optical fiber micro bend sensor for respiration monitoring

A new fiber optic micro bend sensor has been proposed in this paper for respiration monitoring. The detected respiration rate was verified by counting the breathing manually. Therefore the purpose of this paper is to find the appropriate gear numbers and cycles of the optical fiber micro bend modulator in order to enhance the accuracy of the measurement result. The relevant improvement measures will be applied to the medical field in the future. The number of the fiber optic micro bend sensor's teeth has been determined by the simulation results and based on which the micro bend modulator tooth structure were designed. The size of the tooth is 6 mm, and the number of teeth is 15. This structure is a kind of seat-back type fiber optic micro bend sensor. This sensors can be used to measure vital signs because it possess several advantages, such as real-time and accuracy, low cost and convenient operation.