A New Ka-Band Doppler Radar in Robust and Precise Cardiopulmonary Remote Sensing

Abstract

In this paper, a new Ka-band Doppler radar with an ability to remotely monitor respiration rate, heartbeat rate (HR), and heart rate variability (HRV) is presented. Exploiting the advantage of high sensitivity of Ka-band radar in sensing of chest-wall movement, we make more accurate reconstruction of cardiopulmonary activities from low-quality received signal. The advantage of using Ka-band radar is obtained by paying a penalty, which is harmonic interferences that make measuring of cardiopulmonary details infeasible in lots of real scenarios. In this paper, by using a more complete model of return signal, a new routine is introduced for the robust detection of breathing and HR that extremely alleviates the problems associated with harmonic interferences. Besides, a more suitable model is proposed, which can cover time-variability cardiorespiratory features. Taking advantage of this model and based on the unconditional orthonormal representation of band-limited signals, a filter with time-varying coefficients is proposed to extract HRV. This extraction is done without resorting to tracking HR trace that makes it more precise and robust than the conventional approach. The indicated filter enables us to suggest a novel approach to remove random body motion effects. By experimental data, the applicability of the new radar for a wide range of real world scenarios is investigated, and its advantages beside conventional approaches are proved practically in different aspects.