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arXiv · 2111.04185

CoughTrigger: Earbuds IMU Based Cough Detection Activator Using An Energy-efficient Sensitivity-prioritized Time Series Classifier

Shibo Zhang·Ebrahim Nemati·Minh Dinh·Nathan Folkman·Tousif Ahmed·Mahbubur Rahman·Jilong Kuang·Nabil Alshurafa·Alex Gao
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Abstract

Persistent coughs are a major symptom of respiratory-related diseases. Increasing research attention has been paid to detecting coughs using wearables, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Among all types of sensors utilized, microphone is most widely used to detect coughs. However, the intense power consumption needed to process audio signals hinders continuous audio-based cough detection on battery-limited commercial wearable products, such as earbuds. We present CoughTrigger, which utilizes a lower-power sensor, an inertial measurement unit (IMU), in earbuds as a cough detection activator to trigger a higher-power sensor for audio processing and classification. It is able to run all-the-time as a standby service with minimal battery consumption and trigger the audio-based cough detection when a candidate cough is detected from IMU. Besides, the use of IMU brings the benefit of improved specificity of cough detection. Experiments are conducted on 45 subjects and our IMU-based model achieved 0.77 AUC score under leave one subject out evaluation. We also validated its effectiveness on free-living data and through on-device implementation.

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Shibo Zhang, Ebrahim Nemati, Minh Dinh, Nathan Folkman, Tousif Ahmed, Mahbubur Rahman, Jilong Kuang, Nabil Alshurafa, Alex Gao. 2021-11-07. CoughTrigger: Earbuds IMU Based Cough Detection Activator Using An Energy-efficient Sensitivity-prioritized Time Series Classifier. https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.04185

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