WiRe-breath : a sustainable WiFi-based real-time respiratory monitoring solution

Abstract

Respiratory monitoring, including respiratory rate monitoring and apnea detection, plays an essential role in daily healthcare, especially for older adults. Existing WiFi-based respiratory detection models lack a systematic device deployment strategy and face limitations in real-time monitoring in complex environments. This paper presents WiRe-Breath, a non-intrusive and real-time respiratory monitoring system based on off-the-shelf WiFi devices. Unlike previous approaches, only periodic beacons from routers are utilized for respiratory analysis in the proposed system, significantly increasing sustainability and reliability for long-term monitoring. To ensure high accuracy, we propose a respiratory sensing model and determine the optimal device deployment strategy. Specifically, we enhance respiratory rate features through effective motion enhancement and respiratory rate extraction approaches. Additionally, an apnea detection algorithm is designed for disease surveillance. A web application is also implemented for real-time respiratory status monitoring. Our experimental results indicate that the proposed system achieves an average accuracy of 98.86% for respiratory rate detection in quiet environments and 97.72% in environments with interference. WiRe-Breath also demonstrates effective apnea detection, fulfills real-time monitoring requirements, and delivers state-of-the-art performance.