Heart rate variability (HRV) is one of the important biomarkers of physical and psychological well-being. Hence, a convenient and minimally intrusive method for HRV measurement is advantageous. Although high levels of surrogacy of short-term HRV estimates obtained from the measurements of blood volume changes to traditional electrocardiographic (ECG) measurements have been reported, no detailed account on extraction of such parameters from a wrist-based optical monitor is found in the literature. In this paper, a yellow-orange wavelength-based optical scheme is incorporated into a wearable device for HRV estimation from dorsal side of the wrist. This design is pivotal in catering to a wider span of population with varied skin tones. The developed wearable in alliance with a gateway device is capable of picking up photoplethysmography from the measurement site, allowing estimation of HRV-indices within a confidence of 5% from ECG-derived parameters. The HRV measurement ecosystem is validated under the setting of three postural loads for 20 subjects, generating 60 data sets. Study results show statistically significant positive correlation and nonsignificant bias in Bland-Altman analysis, for the HRVindices derived from either method. In most of the extracted HRV features, the observations in supine position showed minimum deviation from the reference. Estimation of short-term HRVindices from wrist-based photoplethysmography under stationary conditions shows promising results from the study. Electrical and biological noninterference and ease of usage of the proposed design simplify stationary and ambulatory monitoring of HRV. © 2018 IEEE.