Towards development of wireless sensor system for monitoring anesthetic agents

In this paper, the design and development of sensing system for volatile anesthetic agent based on wireless sensor network is proposed. The proposed system include smart sensor chip fabricated by dip coating conducting polymer for sensing sevoflurane, the most commonly used inhalational anesthetic agent. This paper also discusses the total sensor system design including hardware design, software design and sensor integration. Present sensor system consists of both wireless sensing unit and a wireless receiving unit. The wireless sensing unit includes, sensing module, data acquisition module and wireless microprocessor module. The design of the wireless receiving unit includes two functional modules, a wireless microprocessor module and gateway. The experimental study was conducted to investigate the proposed prototype wireless sensor system. Results indicate the response of the sensor is rapid, and while returning to the initial level immediately after removal of the analyte. The response time T₉₀ (represents the time to 90% signal with the equilibrium signal) of 5.77% sevoflurane sensing curve is less than 60 s, and recovery time is also less than 60 s. This system has good potential application in monitoring indoor environments in hospitals and being anesthetic agent it is a challenge subject to study as well.