Publication Type
Conference Proceeding Article
Version
acceptedVersion
Publication Date
3-2025
Abstract
Respiratory rate (RR) monitoring is integral to understanding physical and mental health and tracking fitness. Existing studies have demonstrated the feasibility of RR monitoring under specific user conditions (e.g., while remaining still, or while breathing heavily). Yet, performing accurate, continuous and non-obtrusive RR monitoring across diverse daily routines and activities remains challenging. In this work, we present RespEar, an earable-based system for robust RR monitoring. By leveraging the unique properties of in-ear microphones in earbuds, RespEar enables the use of Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia (RSA) and Locomotor Respiratory Coupling (LRC), physiological couplings between cardiovascular activity, gait and respiration, to indirectly determine RR. This effectively addresses the challenges posed by the almost imperceptible breathing signals under daily activities. We further propose a suite of meticulously crafted signal processing schemes to improve RR estimation accuracy and robustness. With data collected from 18 subjects over 8 activities, RespEar measures RR with a mean absolute error (MAE) of 1.48 breaths per minutes (BPM) and a mean absolute percent error (MAPE) of 9.12% in sedentary conditions, and a MAEof2.28BPMandaMAPEof11.04%inactiveconditions, respectively, which is unprecedented for a method capable of generalizing across conditions with a single modality.
Discipline
Artificial Intelligence and Robotics
Research Areas
Intelligent Systems and Optimization
Areas of Excellence
Digital transformation
Publication
Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (PerCom 2025), Washington, DC, March 17-21
First Page
1
Last Page
16
Publisher
IEEE
City or Country
Piscataway, NJ
Citation
LIU, Yang; BUTKOW, Kayla-Jade; STUCHBURY-WASS, Jake; PULLIN, Adam; MA, Dong; and MASOLO, Cecilia.
Respear: Earable-based robust respiratory rate monitoring. (2025). Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (PerCom 2025), Washington, DC, March 17-21. 1-16.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/9943
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
