ECE 117
Final Project: Apnea Detector using Capacitive
Humidity Sensor
Ariston Gonzalez, 2006-02657
Alvin Merck de Leon, 2006-17739
Joy Santos, 2006-18825
Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering
University of the Philippines Diliman
Abstract – This project is an apnea detector that is
interfaced using a capacitive humidity sensor. When a
person stops breathing for approximately 10 seconds, it
will be indicated in the hyperterminal as an occurrence of
apnea. The varying capacitance of the sensor is mapped
into the 500mV to 2V range. The voltage range is
interfaced in the microcontroller using it’s analog-to-
digital converter. Apnea is detected when a 10% drop
from the average breathing relative humidity of the
subject.
I. INTRODUCTION
A PNEA is a term for suspension of external
breathing. During this event, the movement of the
muscles of respiration come to a halt and the volume of
the lungs initially remains unchanged. Flow of gas
between the lungs and the environment depend on the
openness of the airways. Apnea can be voluntarily
achieved by a person holding his/her breath, drug-
induced, mechanically induced by strangulation or
choking.
Prolonged apnea leads to severe lack of oxygen in the
blood circulation. Permanent brain damage can occur
after just as little as three minutes and even death for
longer time than that. The volume of each breath is
tightly regulated to maintain constant values of CO 2
tension and pH of the blood. In apnea, CO2 is not
removed through the lungs and is collected in the blood.
The rise in CO2 tension and drop in pH result in
stimulation of the respiratory center in the brain which
eventually cannot be overcome voluntarily.
Sleep apnea is a sleep disorder wherein breathing is
paused during sleep. Each episode, called an apnea, lasts
long enough so that one or more breaths are missed. This
is the more general knowledge which people associate
apnea to. Such episodes occur repeatedly throughout
sleep. It is standardized to be called an apneic event
when either a 10 second interval between breaths occur
or blood oxygen destaturation of 3-4% or higher. Sleep
apnea is diagnosed with an overnight sleep test called a
polysomnogram or a “sleep study”. Polysomnogram is a
comprehensive recording of the biophysiological
changes that occur during sleep. An apnea monitor can
and will aid in this test to identify the sleep disorder.
Also by making it able to identify the sleep disorder,
prevention is possible thanks to the apnea monitor.
Although apnea monitors are designed using sensors
simultaneously monitoring a subject; in this project, only
the relative humidity of the breath is checked. By this
statement, the breathing pattern is analyzed by
measuring the relative humidity of the breath because
the human breath is 95% humid.
II. MOTIVATION
Apnea is a period of time during which breathing stops
or is markedly reduced. It usually occurs during sleep,
and when it occurs, sleep is usually disrupted and the
person may go into a shallow level of sleep or even
wake up completely. Some of the complications of
having sleep apnea are post-sleep fatigue, stress, or even
general weakness of the muscles. An estimate of the
severity of apnea is calculated by dividing the number of
apneas by the number of hours of sleep, giving an apnea
index (AI). The bigger the apnea index, the more severe
the apnea is.
The apnea index can then be closely observed by using
an apnea monitor. An apnea monitor is a piece of
equipment that records breathing patterns of a person.
The main purpose of this project is to monitor and record
the breathing pattern of a patient and eventually give
signals while apnea is occurring.
Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is the most common
category of sleep-disordered breathing. The muscle tone
of the body ordinarily relaxes during sleep, and at the
level of the throat the human airway is composed of
collapsible walls of soft tissue which can obstruct
breathing during sleep. Mild occasional sleep apnea,
such as many people experience during an upper
respiratory infection, may not be important, but chronic
severe obstructive sleep apnea requires treatment to
prevent low blood oxygen hypoxemia, sleep deprivation,
and other complications. The most serious complication
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is a severe form of congestive heart failure called cor

pulmonale.
Individuals with low muscle tone and soft tissue around
the airway (e.g., because of obesity) and structural
features that give rise to a narrowed airway are at high
risk for obstructive sleep apnea. The elderly are more
likely to have OSA than young people. Men are more
typical sleep apnea sufferers than women and children,
although it is not uncommon in the latter two. Figure 3. Basic Integrator Op-amp configuration
There has been, in recent years, an increasing awareness Solving for the KCL equation at the inverting terminal
of the incidence as what is now known as sudden infant of the op-amp we will have:
death syndrome, or crib death. In some instances, this
tragedy has been attributed to apnea, or a cessation of
breathing, of the infant that usually lasts for more than
15 seconds. Usually it happens to premature infants and
is also called Apnea of prematurity.
This project may then be used in Medical
Instrumentation for both children and adults in
prevention of worse occurrences. The output of the basic op-amp integrator circuit has a
voltage output that drifts incrementally. To eliminate this
voltage drift at the output, resistor R2 is placed in parallel
III. OBJECTIVES with the feedback capacitor C1 (Figure 4).
To be able to observe breathing patterns.
(Inhale/Exhale detection)
To be able to detect apnea occurrence
To be able to make data logging/record
breathing patterns

IV. METHODOLOGY
The design’s block diagram is shown in Figure 1.

Signal uController
Sensing PC interface
Conditioning Interface
Figure 4. Integrator Circuit with Drift regulator

Figure 1. Apnea Detector Block Diagram Any change that the capacitive sensor experienced has
little effect on the variation of the amplitude of the
The sensing and the signal conditioning blocks comprise integrated output. Therefore a need to amplify this
the Instrumentation stage of the project. This stage will change without amplifying the whole output is
be the bulk of the hardware of the project and is divided introduced in the circuit. A difference amplifier was the
into three main stages (Figure 2). first choice for this task, but the many advantages that an
instrumentation amplifier offers made us decide to use
the latter. The inputs that will be fed to the
Integrator Instrumentation Peak instrumentation amplifier will come from two
Circuits Amplifier Detector integrating op-amp circuits. The first integrator circuit
bears the capacitive sensor as the feedback while the
Figure 2. Hardware Block Diagram other integrator circuit has a fixed valued capacitor. The
second integrator will serve as the reference integrator
The basic configuration of an op-amp integrator circuit circuit which will be subtracted from the first integrator.
is shown in Figure 3. The expected output of the instrumentation amplifier
will then contain, at the very least, the small change or
variation that the sensor will introduce if any change in
humidity is sensed. The instrumentation amplifier should
ECE 117 3

also have a gain control in order to change the
magnitude of the small change that is captured.
The operation of the peak detector is based on the idea of
holding off the charge that a capacitor holds. The diode
will conduct positive half-cycles, charging the capacitor
to the waveform’s peak. When the input waveform falls
below the DC peak stored on the capacitor, the diode is
reversed biased, blocking current flow from capacitor
back to the source. Thus, the capacitor retains the peak
value even as the waveform drops to zero.

V. HARDWARE AND SCHEMATIC

Figure 5. Instrumentation Amplifier Circuit

Where, R8=R7, R10=R9, R5=R6, Rpot = VR1. VR1 is a Figure 7. Schematic Full
10kΩ potentiometer place in between the difference op-
amps to serve as the gain of the overall instrumentation
amplifier. (Figure 5)

Figure 8. Actual Circuit

VI. RESULTS AND ANALYSIS

Figure 6. Modified Peak Detector Circuit

Overall, the effect of any variation in humidity has been

translated into a change in the amplitude of a voltage
output. The instrumentation amplifier stage’s output is
still an imperfect sawtooth waveform with varying
amplitude depending on the relative humidity sensed by
HS101. To isolate the variation we are interested in
further, a peak detector is introduced as a mediator
between the instrumentation part of the project and the
uController.
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From the relative humidity curve of rough rice (also

tested in the project),

VII. CONCLUSION
The project was successful in detecting apnea and
monitoring breathing patterns using only a humidity
sensor. Apnea may not be detected successfully through
this project but can be prevented at a greater probability.
Hardware construction was not very tedious once the
required stages were planned accordingly. This project
also aided in proving the instrumentation amplifier from
the lecture class because of the accurate output of the
circuit. Software programming helped in giving a more
reliable and real time measurement. The actual sensor
also assisted the project because it easily fitted the
breathing mask generally available in the public (does
not need a specific breathing mask).

VIII. RECOMMENDATIONS
The project could have been more marketable if it was
contained in a mobile package wherein it only requires a
single voltage supply. To do this, the operation
amplifiers that were used could be replaced with single
supplied operational amplifiers like the LM358. An
alarm system can be interfaced in the project when a
warning needs to be noticed using a simple buzzer. A
more in depth data recording could also improve this
project.

IX. REFERENCES
[1] C-5Rice Drying Principles.pdf.
[2] HS1101 Capacitive Humidity Sensor Datasheet
[3] LM741 Datasheet
Dry Rice 1.1V 25%RH
Wet Salt 1.4V 75%RH
Human Breath 1.5V-1.6V 95%RH

From the table, the characteristic equation is

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