The volatile particles and molecules in our dry exhaled breath can reveal enormous information about the health of any person, such as the person’s respiratory and metabolic functioning. Beyond the carbon dioxide level is an indicator of life, it provides important health-related data like people’s metabolic rate. This study considers periodic open and closed resonators for measuring carbon dioxide concentration in dry exhaled breath. Transfer matrix and green methods are used to simulate the interaction between acoustic waves and the proposed sensor. The band gaps using the green method coincide with the transmittance spectra by the transfer matrix. The suggested sensor recorded a sensitivity of $$5.3 Hz.{m}^{-1}.s$$
5.3
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, a figure of merit of 10,254 $${m}^{-1}.s$$
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, a detection limit of $$5\times {10}^{-6} m.{s}^{-1}$$
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, and a quality factor of $$3\times {10}^{6}$$
3
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. Furthermore, the efficiency shows that the proposed design is appropriate as a diagnostic sensor for different diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary. Besides, cylindrical-adapted sensors are urgently needed in medicine, industry, and biology because they can simultaneously be used for fluid transport and detection.