Night-to-night variability of sleep activity requires more home-based portable sleep monitoring instead of clinical polysomnography examination in the laboratory. In this article, a wireless sleep activity monitoring system is described. The system is light and small for the user. Sleep postures, such as supine or left/right side, were observed by a signal from a tri-axis accelerometer. An overnight electrocardiogram was also recorded with a single lead. Using an MSP430 as microcontroller, both physiological signals were transmitted by a Bluetooth chip. A Labview-based interface demonstrated the recorded signal and sleep posture. Three nights of sleep recordings were used to examine night-to-night variability. The proposed system can record overnight heart rate. Results show that sleep posture and posture change can be precisely detected via tri-axis accelerometer information. There is no significant difference within subject data sets, but there are statistically significant differences among subjects, both for heart rate and for sleep posture distribution. The wireless transmission range is also sufficient for home-based users.
