Abstract
Current cardiopulmonary activity monitoring is based on contact devices which cannot be used in extreme cases such as premature infants, burnt victims or rescue operations. In order to overcome these limitations, the use of radar technologies emerges as an alternative. This paper aims to enhance the comprehension that non-contact technologies, in particular radar techniques, offer as a monitoring tool. For this purpose, a modified low cost commercial 122 GHz frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) radar is used to better fit the current application domain. The radar signals obtained are processed using a classic linear filtering algorithm aiming to separate the breathing from the heartbeat component while preserving signals integrity. In a standoff configuration and with different subject orientations, results show that the signal obtained with the radar can be used to extract not only the respiratory and heartbeat rates, but also the heart rate variability (HRV) sequence. Moreover, results evidence the coupling between breathing and heartbeat, also showing that the HRV sequence obtained can identify the respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) effect. Finally, the radar is tested in a simultaneous multi-target scenario, demonstrating its monitoring capabilities in more complex situations. Nevertheless, there are some challenges left to use the system in a real-life monitoring environments, such as the removal of random body movements.
Highlights
Noncontact monitoring of cardiopulmonary activity has gained attraction in the past decade since it is a promising solution to overcome difficulties during sleep monitoring, patients in a burn unit, post-surgery monitoring, newborn infants, or in rescue working, because it makes possible to control and monitor people remotely, without a wired system [1,2,3]
Our results show that the system is capable of identifying the breathing and heartbeat rates, but it can capture the contributions from these two organs in the radar signals, and we can separate these joint contributions into its breathing and heartbeat components
Results show that different parameters such as heart rate and more sophisticated ones like the heart rate variability (HRV) can be derived from the sequences extracted, which might be useful as monitoring tools
Summary
Noncontact monitoring of cardiopulmonary activity has gained attraction in the past decade since it is a promising solution to overcome difficulties during sleep monitoring, patients in a burn unit, post-surgery monitoring, newborn infants, or in rescue working, because it makes possible to control and monitor people remotely, without a wired system [1,2,3]. It results in a more comfortable situation for the patient, creating better conditions for more accurate diagnoses. The aim of this work is to enhance the comprehension that radar technologies offer as a monitoring and diagnosis tool
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