Abstract
Non-invasive remote health monitoring plays a vital role in epidemiological situations such as SARS outbreak (2003), MERS (2015) and the recently ongoing outbreak of COVID-19 because it is extremely risky to get close to the patient due to the spread of contagious infections. Non-invasive monitoring is also extremely necessary in situations where it is difficult to use complicated wired connections, such as ECG monitoring for infants, burn victims or during rescue missions when people are buried during building collapses/earthquakes. Due to the unique characteristics such as higher penetration capabilities, extremely precise ranging, low power requirement, low cost, simple hardware and robustness to multipath interferences, Impulse Radio Ultra Wideband (IR-UWB) technology is appropriate for non-invasive medical applications. IR-UWB sensors detect the macro as well as micro movement inside the human body due to its fine range resolution. The two vital signs, i.e., respiration rate and heart rate, can be measured by IR-UWB radar by measuring the change in the magnitude of signal due to displacement caused by human lungs, heart during respiration and heart beating. This paper reviews recent advances in IR- UWB radar sensor design for healthcare, such as vital signs measurements of a stationary human, vitals of a non-stationary human, vital signs of people in a vehicle, through the wall vitals measurement, neonate’s health monitoring, fall detection, sleep monitoring and medical imaging. Although we have covered many topics related to health monitoring using IR-UWB, this paper is mainly focused on signal processing techniques for measurement of vital signs, i.e., respiration and heart rate monitoring.
Highlights
In the year 2002, the Ultra-Wide Band (UWB) regulations permitted the unlicensed operation in the frequency range of 3.1 to 10.6 GHz
Literature related to medical applications of Impulse Radio Ultra Wideband (IR-UWB) radar, mainly vital sign monitoring of a human, is discussed
Different scenarios are discussed, such as vital signs monitoring of a stationary human, sleep monitoring and driver vitals monitoring for safety purposes
Summary
In the year 2002, the Ultra-Wide Band (UWB) regulations permitted the unlicensed operation in the frequency range of 3.1 to 10.6 GHz. Many researchers have shown interest in the non-invasive vital signs monitoring of humans due to the fact that it is easy to monitor a person wirelessly than using wired conventional electrocardiography (ECG), pulse oximetry and innovative wearable devices. These wired devices have disadvantages such as limiting mobility of patients and spread of contagious infections between patients and hospital staff members [45]. A related paper [51] has discussed radar-based health monitoring, but the main focus is on hardware optimization research, and the signal processing techniques are not covered in detail. This paper provides a tutorial overview of the work done in the vital signs through IR-UWB radar
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