International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics

Volume 119 No. 16 2018, 1863-1868

ISSN: 1314-3395 (on-line version)
url: http://www.acadpubl.eu/hub/
Special Issue
http://www.acadpubl.eu/hub/

DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF IOT BASED PULSE OXIMETER

L.K.Hema1, R. Mohana Priya2 , R. Indumathi3

1
Associate Professor, 2 ,3 Assistant. Professor Gr. II,
ECE Department, Aarupadai Veedu Institute of Technology,
Vinayaka Mission’s Research Foundation, Deemed to be University, Chennai.
hemalk@avit.ac.in

ABSTRACT

=======================================================================
A pulse oximeter is a medical instrument that indirectly measures the saturation oxygen level of a
patients’ blood, i.e what proportion of the oxygen-carrying molecules in the blood (called hemoglobin)
are actually carrying oxygen. This is known as oxygen saturation or SpO2.This saturation point oxygen
level is very important to monitor while a patient is at risk for further process of medication. In our
paper we proposed to develop a pulse oximeter to measure the saturation point oxygen level and the
same would be stored in the cloud and also it is available live to the client’s hand held device (mobile
phone).In this paper, we seek to monitor a patient’s heart rate and blood-oxygen level using a pulse
oximeter. The pulse oximeter is designed using infrared and visible (red) light detection from light that
passes through a patient’s finger from an emitter. The absorption will tell when blood is moving
through the finger and how much of this is oxygen-rich. The output of this analog circuit will be fed
into an Node microcontroller, which computes the pulse and oxygen level from these numbers. The
values are uploaded to a cloud computing web host called Thingspeak from where it can be viewed.

Keywords— Pulseoximeter, Internet of Things (IoT), Thingspeak

.=======================================================================

1. INTRODUCTION will be designed that is specifically suited to

Pulse oximeters have been used in medical
settings for many years. In many cases, such
as during an operation, in intensive care, the
emergency room, even an unpressurized
aircraft, a person’s oxygen level may be
unstable and needs monitoring. In addition,
from these readings, the person’s heart rate
can also be determined. This project is an
attempt to construct a working version of a
pulse oximeter from a relatively cheap set of
parts – including a microcontroller. An off-
the-shelf microcontroller has enough
processing power to perform the tasks
required for this design; however, in any
commercial application, specialized hardware
the task.
The sampling portion of this design requires
an infrared emitter (around 940 nm
wavelength) and a red light emitter (around
660 nm wavelength. The absorption of
oxyhemoglobin and the deoxygenated form
differs significantly between these
wavelengths. Therefore, using the ratio of the
two absorption values gives the percentage of
arterial haemoglobin for oxyhemoglobin. The
detectors do not give a very high voltage, so
the output from the detector needs to be
amplified using op amps before passing into
the microcontroller for analysis. If not, the
relative change will not be seen when the
microcontroller makes the input a discreet
value.

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This attempt at a pulse oximeter is fairly crude
and does not take into consideration some
important facts if it were to be used in a
serious situation. For instance, it does not
take into account other gasses in the blood
stream. If a person has been rescued from a
burning building, they may have carbon
monoxide poisoning. In order to distinguish
the difference between CO and O2, absorption
at additional wavelengths must be performed.
Another example is a person suffering from
poor gas exchange in the lungs. Their blood
may have a 100% oxygen level, but may still
be suffering from too much carbon dioxide
(CO2) that cannot be exchanged and exhaled.
The microcontroller is required to perform a
discrete Fourier transform to determine the
pulse. This transform will take a collection of
data over time and extract the amplitude of
each of the frequencies it contains. In the case
of our data, there should be a pretty distinct
pattern of when there is blood movement.
Therefore, we should obtain one frequency
where the amplitude is much higher than any
other frequencies detected. This should
correspond to the frequency of the pulse of the
person using the device.
In most design projects, there is a trade off to
what should be done with hardware or with
software. In our paper, there is not much of a
design comparison. The sampling and
amplification must be done in hardware with
analog values to obtain the correct results. For
the calculations and the video generation, we
need a device with enough processing power
and features to perform meet all the timing
requirements. In this case, the Node MCU is a
good fit at a low cost.
2. PROPOSED SYSTEM
The block diagram of the proposed system is
shown in Fig 1.
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Fig. 1 Block diagram of IoT enabled Pulse
oximeter
It consists of the following parts.
SPO 2 Sensor/ Pulse oximeter
Pulse oximetry is based on the concept that
arterial oxygen saturation determinations can
be made using two wavelengths, provided the
measurements are made on the pulsatile part
of the waveform. The two wavelengths
assume that only two absorbers are present;
namely oxy haemoglobin (HbO2) and reduced
hemoglobin (Hb). These observations, proven
by clinical experience, are based on the
following:
(i) Light passing through the ear or finger will
be absorbed by skin pigments, tissue,
cartilage, bone, arterial blood, venous blood.
(ii) The absorbance are additive and obey the
Beer-Lambert law:
A = –log T = log lo/I = e D C
Where Io and I are incident and transmitted
light intensities, e is the extinction coefficient,
D is the depth of the absorbing layer and C is
concentration.
(iii) Most of the absorbance are fixed and do
not change with time. Even blood in the
capillaries and veins under steady state
metabolic circumstances is constant in
composition and flow, at least over short
periods of time.
(iv) Only the blood flow in the arteries and
arterioles is pulsatile. Therefore, only
measuring the changing signal, measures only
the absorbance due to arterial blood and
makes possible the determination of arterial
oxygen saturation (SaO2). This is
uninfluenced by all the other absorbers which
are simply part of the constant background
signal.
International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics
Figure (a) shows a typical fingertip oximeter
probe in use whereas Fig (b) shows the
construction of a typical pulse oximeter probe.
This has two LEDs (light emitting diodes),
one that transmits infrared light at a
wavelength of approximately 940 nm and the
other transmitting light at approximately 660
nm. The absorption of these select
wavelengths of light through living tissues is
significantly different for oxygenated
haemoglobin (HbO2) and reduced
haemoglobin (Hb). The absorption of these
selected wavelengths of light passing through
living tissue is measured with a photo sensor.
Fig 2. a. A typical finger tip pulse oximeter
probe
b. Components of pulse oximeter probes.
The red and infrared LEDs within the probe
are driven in different ways, depending on the
manufacturer. Most probes have a single
photo detector (PIN-diode), so the light
sources are generally sequenced on and off.
The pre processing of the photodiode and led
would take considerable time and resources to
get the desired signal. Hence we use a sensor
called Proto central MAX30100. The sensor
contains the necessary circuits to obtain the
desired signals.The MAX30100 is an
integrated pulse oximetry and heart-rate
monitor sensor solution. It combines two
LEDs, a photo detector, optimized optics, and
low-noise analog signal processing to detect
pulse oximetry and heart-rate signals. The
MAX30100 operates from 1.8V and 3.3V
power supplies and can be powered down
through software with negligible standby
current, permitting the power supply to remain
connected at all times.
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SPO2 Subsystem
The SpO2 subsystem in the MAX30100 is
composed of ambient light cancellation
(ALC), 16-bit sigma delta ADC, and
proprietary discrete time filter. The SpO2
ADC is a continuous time oversampling sigma
delta converter with up to 16-bit resolution.
The ADC output data rate can be programmed
from 50Hz to 1 kHz. The MAX30100
includes a proprietary discrete time filter to
reject 50Hz/60Hz interference and low-
frequency residual ambient noise.
Temperature Sensor
The MAX30100 has an on-chip temperature
sensor for (optionally) calibrating the
temperature dependence of the SpO2
subsystem. The SpO2 algorithm is relatively
insensitive to the wavelength of the IR LED,
but the red LED’s wavelength is critical to
correct interpretation of the data. The
temperature sensor data can be used to
compensate the SpO2 error with ambient
temperature changes.
LED Driver
The MAX30100 integrates red and IR LED
drivers to drive LED pulses for SpO2 and HR
measurements. The LED current can be
programmed from 0mA to 50mA (typical
only) with proper supply voltage. The LED
pulse width can be programmed from 200µs
to 1.6ms to optimize measurement accuracy
and power consumption based on use cases.
ESP8266
The ESP8266 is a low-cost WiFi chip with
full TCP/IP stack and MCU (Microcontroller
Unit) capability.This small module allows
microcontrollers to connect to a Wi-Fi
network and make simple TCP/IP connections
using Hayes-style commands.
NODE MCU
The microcontroller used for interfacing the
sensor is the Node MCU. It is a lua based
International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics Special Issue

microcontroller consisting of an ESP8266 mainly doctors, patient relations and insurance

WiFi module. This is the controller used for clients.
communicating the results to online web
server. It is an open source IoT platform. It
includes firmware which runs on
the ESP8266 WiFi from Espressif system, and
hardware, which is based on the ESP-12
module.

ARDUINO IDE

The Arduino Integrated Development

Environment -or Arduino Software (IDE) -
contains a text editor for writing code, a
message area, a text console, a toolbar with Fig 3. Hardware circuitry of IoT enabled
buttons for common functions and a series of Pulseoximeter
menus. It is used to connect the Arduino and
Genuino hardware to upload the programs and
communicate with them. The steps are as
follows
 To install and configure Arduino IDE for
ESP8266.
 Launching of ESP8266 Arduino IDE for
NODE MCU.
 The programming of ESP8266 Arduino is
carried out further.
 To enable the ESP8266 WiFi connectivity.
 To use the ESP8266 in specific
applications, we have to send request to
the web server and get the response we
need a web server.
Fig 4. Heart rate output in clients’ handheld
 To create a Web Server using ESP8266, device
include the header
<ESP8266WebServer.h>
The above Fig.4 shows the output image of
the value of heart rate lively through mobile
3. RESULT & DISCUSSION gadget.
The hardware circuitry of the IoT enabled
Pulseoximeter has several components like
power regulator, transformer, node
microcontroller, ESP8266 module and pulse
oximeter sensor. The spo2 sensor measures
and sends the oxygen level to ESP8266
module and sends that data to Thingspeak web
computing host, so the data made available in
cloud. This method helps to view the patients’
oxygen level lively in clients handheld device

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4. Brian Benchoff. "An SDK for the

ESP8266 Wi-Fi chip". Hackaday.

5. Vowstar. "Node MCU

Devkit". Github. Node MCU Team.
Retrieved 2 April 2015.

6. Zeroday. "A lua based firmware for

wifi-soc esp8266". Github. Retrieved 2
April 2015.

7. Manan Mehta “ESP 8266: A

Breakthrough In Wireless Sensor
Networks And Internet Of Things”, 8,
Fig 5. SpO2 Output in clients’ handheld device Aug 2015, pp. 07-11.
8. MAX 30100 Pulse oximeter Data Sheet
The Fig 5 shows the output image of the SpO2
value lively through the mobile i.e., clients’
hand held device.

4. CONCLUSION

The IoT Enabled Pulse Oximeter developed

has been a relative success compared to
mainstream Pulse Oximetry and Pulse-Rate
devices. Thus our aim to make the system
accessible and portable has been proved and
tested thoroughly. With the connection with
the Internet, even remote doctors can assess
the condition of the person by checking the
result from the web. Hence, the device has
proved to be fruitful despite its challenges.

REFERENCES

1. Takatani, S. and J. Ling, 1994, Optical

oximetry sensors for whole blood and
tissue, IEEE Eng. in Med. And Biol.,
13, 3, 347.

2. Mendelson, Y, et al, 1988, Design and

evaluation of a new reflectance pulse
oximeter sensor, Medical Instrum.,
22(4), p. 167.

3. Kumar, Abhijeet et al., "Internet of

Life (IOL)." (2015). ISBN 978-93-
5156-328-0

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